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

Wed Mar 25 07:40:40 UCT 2009

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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