fragmentos (ongoing)

14th January 2016, 13:19
Thread: Will be the FARC-EP political party? from Colombia

Originally Posted by Creative Destruction View Post
so, they're just going to roll into bourgeois politics, like the Sandanistas did?

Do you think that they are not already into bourgeois politics?

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28th June 2015, 14:07
Thread: Newswire from Greece III

Originally Posted by The Feral Underclass View Post
According to a KKE member who has posted in my thread, it is not so clear whether they will default. Apparently that doesn't seem like the option that will be available in the referendum.

They will default because they do not have the money to pay the loans, not because they will vote for default.

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28th June 2015, 01:50

Well, the shit hit the fan.

There is no deal, and Greece will have to take stern measures starting Monday. Likely they are going into a bank holyday, either until next week end referendum, or at least until they can enforce controls on withdrawals.

Greek banks are going insolvent next week; they will need to be either nationalised or saved by the government. Either option needs minting; it looks like the drachma is coming back from Hades' realm.

Either that or some political decision stops the process and restarts the negotiations.

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Well, the shit hit the fan.

There is no deal, and Greece will have to take stern measures starting Monday. Likely they are going into a bank holyday, either until next week end referendum, or at least until they can enforce controls on withdrawals.

Greek banks are going insolvent next week; they will need to be either nationalised or saved by the government. Either option needs minting; it looks like the drachma is coming back from Hades' realm.

Either that or some political decision stops the process and restarts the negotiations.

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27th June 2015, 12:48

Well, it seems that Greece will default, after all. Unless somehow the people votes for austerity in the referendum their government is now calling.

It is time to Europe to concede, or face the consequences.

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27th April 2015, 16:04
Thread: Will be the FARC-EP political party? from Colombia

Originally Posted by Creative Destruction View Post
so, they're just going to roll into bourgeois politics, like the Sandanistas did?

Are they not already at it? Or just because they are a guerrilla army it means they are not "bourgeois"?

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5th September 2014, 13:46
Thread: Ukrainian National Army vs. Donbass peoples militia

Originally Posted by Geiseric View Post
I didnt say "defected," I said they are leaving the army due to the barbarity of the war their government started, egged on by NATO.

So what are those deserters doing? Building up a mass movement to topple Kiev's government, together with Ukrainian workers?

I frankly don't think so.

But… if so, and if they succeed, they are probably on their way to clash against an alliance between Russia and NATO once Kiev's government is history.

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5th September 2014, 13:38

Originally Posted by Mather View Post
I agree.

The main task for communists in NATO countries is to stop their states from carrying out any further interventions in the Ukraine and to resist the demands of their respective ruling classes to start a new cold war with Russia, a cold war that could very easily turn hot.

The same applies to communists in Russia with respect to their own ruling class and their imperialist interests in the Ukraine.

That. And this means workers on each side of the divide opposing their States' own military efforts. Not idolising or misrepresenting the opposite side.

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9th July 2014, 04:35
Thread: Gideon Levy: The world is sick of Israel and its insanities

Originally Posted by GiantMonkeyMan View Post
…. then again, if Hagalaz literally means that the US bourgeois state's policy is dictated by Israel then they are a moron.

To put it simply, the US are the musicians, Israel are the dancers. Not the other way round.

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4th July 2014, 14:51
Thread: [RCIT] Iraq: Defend the Sunni Rebellion against the Maliki Regime and US Imperialism!

Originally Posted by Sasha View Post
Since "we" (as in the west) are among the root creators of this mess we should also give a hand in cleaning it up. But we should only help and not make it worse, so I would say let's put our energy in pressuring our own governments and those they are friendly with into the right action, Israel should accept a real peace plan with a viable Palestinian state, Turkey needs to accept a Kurdish state or federation, SA and Qatar etc need to become at least representive democracies. We need to stop making dirty deals for oil etc etc.

How about letting the Israeli and the Palestinians, the Kurds and the Turks, the Saudis, the Qatari, etc., sorting out their own problems?

If the Saudi want a representative democracy, they will have to fight for it. Any attempt to give one to them as a gift will result in some kind of disaster. As we should already know from past experience.

Evidently, what the US and other imperialist countries should stop doing (but this will only happen if enough pressure is put onto them from below, from their own citizens) is to actively support the reactionary social forces in these countries (namely, clergy, military, landowners) and to pretend they are slowly reforming into some kind of democracy.

This, again, is a struggle to be fought and won in the US, in the UK, in France, in Germany, in Japan, by the American, British, French, German, Japanese, workers. Not in Palestine, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Kuwait, Iran, Libya, Syria, etc.

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3rd July 2014, 20:16

In light of these developments, the central task of socialists is to defend the uprising against the attempts of the Maliki regime, as well as of Washington and Teheran, to crush it.

The central task of socialists is to oppose the war moves of the US and other "Western" countries from within. Which means not supporting this or that faction where we haven't even a foot in the ground, but opposing war where we are, in direct opposition to our own governments.

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19th August 2013, 14:22
Thread: MB supporters in egypt toss police truck of highway

See, what is going on in the Middle East (and elsewhere) cannot be correctly read within the frame of religious sectarianism - or that or international politics, fwiw. True, the political agents on the field do reason along those lines; it doesn't mean that it is the case, it means that the political agents on the field are deluded.

The depth and strength of the upheavals in Egypt, Turkey, Tunisia, Syria, Libya, Qatar, Yemen, etc., are too much to be attributed to sectarian clashes or conspiracies by the CIA/Mossad/FSB/whatever.

But the situation, as of now, is different than it was under Mubarak. Then, a broad movement for the ousting of the dictatorship was possible, uniting every political force in Egypt, from trotskyists to the Muslim Brotherhood. Now, such broad movement is impossible. The MB is on the streets, not to topple the dictatorship, but to reinstate Mursi, or some other of their leaders. But Mursi himself isolated himself from all forces that fought against the dictatorship, and isn't going to be supported by any of them. This means that the brutal repression of the MB insurrection isn't going to prompt an across-the-board oppositional movement. They are on their own now, and, frankly, it doesn't look sensible to anyone in the left to try and rescue them from their isolation.

This prompts a very different issue, which is, how to organise opposition against the military rule in Egypt without making any kind of ouverture to the MB. This, in my opinion, needs a positive agenda; it is not enough to oppose the role of the Army as the backbone of bourgeois rule in Egypt, or to oppose Sharia and the harassment of Copts (even if both things are necessary). It is time to say what Egypt should become, and to be able to say "out the military" without implying "back with Mursi". Otherwise the repression of the MB is going to be only the general rehearsal of the reinstatement of military dictatorial rule, with the laws and practices used to suppress the Ikhwan remaining as a permanent threat against all opposition in Egypt.

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5th July 2013, 13:58
Thread: Leftist Infighting

Originally Posted by User Name View Post
So am I 2/3rds fascist?

Not only that, but it seems that all revolutionaries (anarchists included) are and must be 1/3 fascist.

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28th June 2013, 14:01
Thread: Brazil's protests have become fascist

Originally Posted by psycho View Post
nah, here a clash in Fortaleza was just reported as "a battelfield" with 5000 protesters defending themselves with slingshots, heavy fireworks and bricks and breaching the police lines to almost getting to the football stadium, sounded a bit more "overall" radical than the reports of earlier marches which where reported in majority "peaceful" while small groups of radicals used them as cover for attacks on the state.

Ah, I got confused with the "around the confederations cup match" clause. Yesterday the game was in Belo Horizonte, which was what I was referring to. You were asking about Fortaleza, Wednesday.

But I don't think it was much different, just smaller ("only" 5,000 people). There was violence, destruction of property, arrests. The people who destroyed property are decried as "radicals" or "infiltrated criminals" by the bourgeois press, and as police agent provocateurs by the mainstream protesters.

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28th June 2013, 12:39

Originally Posted by psycho View Post
It's reported here that there where intense, radical clashes tonight arround the confederations cup match?

There were clashes, which even resulted in one death (guy who fell off a viaduct), and about 100 arrests (most were quickly freed). What would a "radical clash" mean? The demands were more or less the same; violence against property remained restricted to a small minority.

The demonstrations in general are getting smaller, and retaking their original aims, especially urban mobility. The bourgeois press apparently no longer thinks it is possible to use them against the federal government, and is claiming the aims were achieved (with the rejection of PEC 37) and denouncing vandalism as unacceptable. Maybe this distorts their reports in the direction of depicting the demonstrations as "more radical".

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27th June 2013, 23:02

Originally Posted by Sinister Cultural Marxist View Post
How fucked are Brazilian politics that anti-corruption efforts are associated essentially with rightwing movements, and talking about anti-corruption empowers the right and not the left? I don't think some corrupt douchebags from the SocDem or PT parties taking state wealthy to buy a couple of condos in the nicest parts of Rio are doing anything for the working class, the oppressed, the peasants, the lumpen etc.

The problem is elsewhere. Corruption is intrinsic to the capitalist system, and the right, consequently, does not oppose it. What it opposes, indeed, is the exposure of corruption; but they use the fact that under democratic rule corruption is more exposed to claim to restrictions on investigations.

For this reason, the "anti-corruption" agenda is always abstract. "Nobody can support the corruption anymore", they shout. But what corruption? Exactly the corruption that is being shown and is leading people into jail. But then the corrupts must be tried and sentenced, and that must follow a due process. Which is the occasion where the suppression of the civil rights of the accused come into discussion. Was José Dirceu guilty? Probably. I haven't read the process, and I am not taking a position that involves the honour of a person with his biography without being very sure of that, though. The justices that tried him found him guilty, and I am not going to contest their judgement on abstractions such as the bourgeois character of the Supreme Court, as so many of my party comrades seem willing to do, either. But under no other government would a former minister be investigated, indicted, and tried, as Dirceu was. Under Fernando Henrique, the General Attorney was popularly know as General Drawer, for the number of processes he hid in his drawer, rather than prosecuting the tucanos. Under Dilma, as under Lula, the General Attorney indicts whomever he sees fit, under the conviction he forms from the investigations. This is an immense conquest of Brazilian democracy, much more important than the personal fate of Dirceu or his group. And yet, people believe corruption is bigger now than then. Which brings public clamour for the condemnation of people without due process, without evidence, without defence. It cannot be allowed, of course; but that makes those who defend the rights of the accused vulnerable to the accusation of defending corruption.

Perhaps instead of complaining of "fascism" when protesters take an anti-corruption line, why not try to reappropriate it? Corruption in politics is clearly a necessary component of bourgeois politics (though it often is legitimized as lobbying), and I don't see why the Left needs to give that debate to the right.

I don't think the protests are fascist, by no means. But there are problems with them, like people from the leftist parties, the unions, or the social movements being attacked by other protesters, and such attacks comes under the discourse of "anti-corruption". And then it becomes difficult for the PT people, or even the PSTU people, to uphold the anti-corruption struggle without being stigmatised as hypocritical. The right, when it goes to the streets, takes advantage of not identifying itself with political parties, and so they can agitate "anti-corruption" consigns without immediately appearing as liars.

Furthermore, there are other demands that imply class struggle directly, and the "anti-corruption" stance is obviously being used to suffocate them. So, while of course we could take to the streets and also shout "down with corrupts", we wouldn't be really reclaiming the struggle: we would be merely tailing the right.

In this context, "anti-corruption" functions as nationalism functions in other places: as a non-political and even anti-political ideology to "unite all" and make class divisions invisible an inoperant.

How is the PRESENCE of rightwing protesters at the Brazilian rallies proof of their PREDOMINANCE? It seems more like there is an active struggle within the protests, and if the right gains in that struggle it's not because the protests themselves were inherently "fascist" but because they were better organized.

The right-wing is by no means predominant within the protests. Nor is the left. The predominance is clearly of a multitude of people - workers, students, housewives, retired people - who have little experience of demonstrations, even less experience in confronting the far right at demonstrations, etc. and who are under the generic influence of bourgeois ideology as propagated in schools, TV, the press, the army, etc.

And the right isn't "better organised" either in the sence that they have parties or clubs with more experience in politics. They benefit from the press being able to influence the demonstrations from the outside, without the need of having organised people within them to consciously defend a political liine.

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26th June 2013, 21:25

Originally Posted by Luís Henrique View Post
The split of the demonstrations continues. Today in Brasília one group will demonstrate against "gay healing" and the representative that chairs the House commission on Human Rights, Marco Feliciano, who supports such absurd; another group is calling a demonstration against corruption; tomorrow the National Students' Union - UNE - calls a demonstration for the approval of the National Education Plan.

In fact, the protest against corruption itself split, with one part accusing the other of being police controlled.

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26th June 2013, 18:52

Well. Congress rejected constitutional amendment #37/2011 by 430 votes against 9 and two abstentions. So a very important fulcral point of the anti-corruption agenda - probably central to the right-wing press' efforts to control the movement - has been neutered. The logic line for the right is now to claim victory for the movement and call it over. The problem - for them - is: if they call people to put an end to demonstrations, won't they leave the streets back to the left? And if they don't, on what agenda will the people continue to protest? Of course, they still have a few demands that they could agitate, but it is unlikely that many of them can fit three requisites that are necessary to make them politically useful for the right: 1) being viable within capitalism; 2) being unacceptable for the government; and 3) having appeal enough for the masses that people will be stimulated to demonstrate for them.

The split of the demonstrations continues. Today in Brasília one group will demonstrate against "gay healing" and the representative that chairs the House commission on Human Rights, Marco Feliciano, who supports such absurd; another group is calling a demonstration against corruption; tomorrow the National Students' Union - UNE - calls a demonstration for the approval of the National Education Plan.

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25th June 2013, 23:19

Originally Posted by khad View Post
Or perhaps not launch a protest in the first place unless the left is more organized with a coherent vision of what it wants, and certainly not go to the streets chanting anti-party slogans which so ironically echo the policies of military rule.

But if want to ask what they can do in the present, little more than damage control.

Well, yes, chanting anti-party slogans is never a good idea, and being more organised is always good. But we can only organise in struggle, we can't really organise people while pretending to keep social peace. What can I do? I really don't like, much less use, anti-party rhetorics, which I think are an integral part of politics of ambiguity, and neither does the MRS, or the PT, or, for what it matters, the PCdoB, the PSTU, the PCB, the PCO, or the PSOL. But anarchists do, and I, or even the PT or the Federal Government, can't by any means forbid them from such (I hope they have learned, and it seems that at least the leadership of the MPL, considering their obviously scared reaction, have, but again this is not within what the neoliberal droids would call "my governability"). So, are you really suggesting that a small number of anarchists may really transform an otherwise pacific and passive nation into a tropical version of the NSDAP by merely agitating an anti-party discourse? Sorry, but upheavals of such dimension need another level of explanation, rooted in class struggle, strength relationships, etc., not this event-centered positivist "analysis".

And, oh, damage control by whom? The working class? The leftist parties? The federal government? According to you, they are all overwhelmed by a strong, though previously unsuspected, hegemony of the far-right, the fascist right indeed, over the overwhelming majority of the population, so how will they control damage? By police suppression of the demonstrations? By indiscriminate concessions to the crazed masses? By going deeper into their non-strategy of not taking to streets, not demanding, not confronting the bourgeoisie?

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25th June 2013, 23:05

Originally Posted by Martin Blank View Post
But here is the thing, Luís: I got more out the rest of the paragraph that starts with the sentences above than I have out of most of the posts in this or the other thread. Those "facts" you deride so much were rather helpful in aiding my understanding of what is happening in Brazil. Seriously, was it really so hard for you to write something like that?

Not at all, and indeed I think I was merely repeating myself, probably to the point of boredom. There is an attempt to control the demonstrations by the Brazilian right, and the far-right is one of the instruments they are using to that end. The demonstrations however were not their invention, they have emerged from deep-felt popular demands. I have been saying this many times, both against the "ooooh the people on the streets, that's a revolution" crowd and against the "Good god, the fascists are coming, Brazil is turning fascist" mob.

No one is suggesting you should lie or resort to the kind of "objective" editorializing that we find in bourgeois media. But at the same time, I would think you'd agree that when reporting on these events to an audience that is not standing in the middle of it, you need context to help explain why this is happening, who are the major forces involved, and (perhaps most importantly for us) how workers around the world should view these events. That requires facts and information, not emotional cries about "ZOMG fACISM!!!!1"

Well, I don't make emotional cries about ZOMG fAsscims!!11onenone, nor I make emotional cries about Da Rebolution is commin, were gonna take pwer tommorrow. I try my best to give consistent analysis; I am not everywhere to see all facts, and my time is also limited; I have to work for a living, shop things in the supermarket, attend boring leftist meetings, etc, so my ability to report facts is very limited, and, anyway, except perhaps a few demos in Brasília, I have to rely on the bourgeois press for facts. It is their interpretations that I disagree with (as well as the usual foolish interpretations here in revleft, from the hay gobierno soy contra to the "oppose both" to "if there is unrest is because of the CIA-Zionist-Salafist-AlQaida conspiracy" brands). Sorry, I can't really provide anything more "objective" - even if I believed that something more "objective" actually existed.

Well, gee, Luís. Could this be why I'm asking you for information, and not simply reading the articles from the Associated Press or BBC? Could it be that I consider your view on the situation more worthwhile and important to understand? Does it not make sense, then, that I would continue to ask you for more information and facts about what is happening so that I can continue to learn more about it?

Thanks for the trust, but…

You don't, because the differences between how "flag-waving" is seen in Brazil versus how it is seen in the U.S. is a fact, not an opinion. I don't know much about Brazil at all, but even I can see that.

Yet people look at flag waving in Brazilian demonstrations and immediately conclude that the demonstrations are nationalist, perhaps even directed by nationalist parties (like - perhaps, I don't know Turkey enough to say - the demonstrations in Turkey by the CHP), and this is because they interpret the flag waving in the frame of how it is done in the US. And then I must come in the discussion and object, no, this is a mistake, there isn't deep nationalism at all, neither from the masses, nor from the bourgeois press or the political right in general, because the relationships between people and nation, and between nation and private property, are different in Brazil, where flag waving has little to do with the suppression of foreigners or asserting international might, and more with creating a Kumbaya moment in which class conflicts may be downplayed. Perhaps this is a "fact", but it is certainly not obvious as "the grass is green", and you will certainly find people, even Brazilians, who disagree with that and think that the differences are not so big, or have another meaning, etc.

25th June 2013, 22:40

Here (unhappily in Portuguese, and again I have not the time or will to translate it) is a quite good article (or perhaps a quite good series of eight articles) that I think much squares the issue. Our terrain is the streets, our terrain is mass demonstrations, our forces are the workers, the poor, the downtrodden, the exploited, the oppressed. If we can't struggle there, if we cannot struggle with them, we are nothing. The right is powerful, the right is resourceful, clever, cunning, even, when necessary, brave and bold. But it is not omnipotent, its slogans and practices aren't appealing to the majority of the population if it gives a thought about them, its aims are contradictory, its unity artificial and brittle, and it can be defeated. Moreso when they are playing a game that is not their game, and risking more than they would like to risk.

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25th June 2013, 22:28

Originally Posted by khad View Post
So after all the hand-wringing and logical leaps required to "problematize" the mass events in Brazil as "contested" terrain, can we just admit to ourselves that the "left" is being outclassed and dominated?

If the leftists had any real street power, we'd be reading about militarist, homophobic, and other assorted right wing banners being seized and burned.

The mass events are certainly contested events. The right managed to attain an uphand position during the last two weeks, from about June 15 on. Is such hegemony durable, or does it reflect an ephemeral turn in class struggle? There are many reasons that I have outlined before, in this thread, that point to it being extremely frail; the position of the right is extremely contradictory (their state and city level governments, for instance, are certainly no models of republican dealing in public money, to say the least), and it has to rely in an alliance with the extreme-right, which has different objectives and tactics, and cannot be trusted with the conduction of a mass movement (it doesn't have, also, I think, real means of doing so): if the right wants a political victory, it needs to, at some moment, and probably as soon as possible, to be able to call out all demonstrations and reinstate "social peace". This is probably the role of provocateurs and vandals at this moment: to turn the populace against the demonstrations, in order to put an end at this (and, ironically enough, they even use the attacks against leftists to that end, haughtily denouncing the violation of the democratic rights of the PSTU activists…) The right is many things, but stupid it is not.

But I would like to understand what political consequences do you want to extract from your "analysis", besides despair or possibly political suicides. If the Brazilian masses are indeed fascists, what do we do? Line up behind Alckmin's police to suppress the demos? Demand that the Federal Government engages in the same line of political repression? Call a popular front uniting from the PSB to the PCdoB to the PCO and the PSTU to unite militarily in order to suppress the demonstrations in street battles (how, if the Brazilian left have no street power?) That we simply give it up since the far-right is more powerful than us?

The accuracy of a political analysis is measured, for the most part, from the political consequences it entails. I fear that you analysis is completely inconsequential, and, as such, deeply mistaken.

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25th June 2013, 22:08

Originally Posted by Devrim View Post
Could you explain what this means in this context, please?

The "periferia" part?

It is the movement of exurban dwellers, where most poor people have to live, distant from jobs and entertainment opportunities. You can see them in action in the photos I linked to in a previous post (#54).

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25th June 2013, 22:01

Originally Posted by Devrim View Post
To be honest I feel a little cynical about the whole assembly thing. I don't think they really represent anybody, more that they are just a collection of who decides to turn up to them. It is not the same as when you have a mass meeting at work. Those sort of meetings do represent people (i.e. the people who work there), and as such tend to have a more serious tone in that they commit people to something. Anybody can vote for a 'general strike' in a street assembly, but when you vote for a strike in a mass meeting at work, you commit yourself to losing money, and risking your job.

I think that the ICC makes a fetish of the assembly form, and deceives itself to the fact that the working class is still weak and unable to assert itself during these sort of movements.

Yes, I think the ICC makes a fetish of that. This is made easier when there are no assemblies at all, though - since there were no popular assemblies in Venezuela, the student demonstrations there could be misinterpreted as "popular assemblies"; in Brazil, there are "popular assemblies", but they are also clearly distinct from the mass demonstrations so far.

A general strike, I fear, will have to wait. But as Brazil more and more approaches a violent crisis of its neokeynesian fantasy, it is also quite certain in the not-so-far future.

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