By ARTUR SCAVONE*
It is necessary to redeem the name "Communist" and cleanse this denomination of the damage that was caused by the successive defeats of past revolutions
1.
The terms “left” and “right” are no longer capable – for some time – of qualifying the fields of political action. Today, being left-wing is a broad denomination that can qualify socialists, communists, anti-imperialists, progressives, identitarians and many other “ists”, constituting a shapeless blur of positions and opinions, often diverse and even antagonistic.
North Korea is anti-imperialist. Are you socialist? Is it “left-wing”? There are plenty of disagreements about China. State Capitalism? Socialism? Single party? Or about Vietnam. Under the obscure mantle of “left” there are obtuse configurations and it also serves to shelter opportunists who take shelter under it, demanding solidarity from other “leftists”, no matter under which configuration they qualify.
The current qualified left field comes from a historical process of dismantling the communist utopia that was being disfigured and deconstituted by the successive collapses of revolutions that aimed at a socialist perspective. The utopia that was established with the October Revolution, the victory over Nazi Germany and the accelerated growth of the Soviet Union, the Chinese and Cuban revolutions, the victory in Vietnam, all stimulated hearts and minds to fight against the rise of capital and North American empire that emerged from the Second World War.
Fidel, Che Guevara, Ho Chi Min and Mao Zedong carried the socialist dream on their shoulders. But the Moscow trials and the fall of the Berlin Wall were the most significant milestones in the fog that covered the same hearts and minds that had previously been conquered.
Today “being leftist” implies what social, programmatic or political determination? Karl Marx's greatest achievement was to lay bare the core of capital. Just as Einstein revealed the enormous force of matter transformed into energy, Marx revealed the enormous force of surplus value and the fetish of merchandise as sparks that enhance the most vile human competence: the power of submission of many to the will of one. Exploiting and dominating to become immeasurably rich has always been a vile human power.
But it was the logic of capital – as well as nuclear fission – that exponentiated this force, endowing it with immeasurable social power disguised as a modern social structure. There are no longer kings and theocracies that dominate miserable populations. They are billionaires who hold power, command and mass communications. Mindless entertainment distracts and alienates, false narratives repeated over and over again capture hearts and minds.
The conception radically summarized in the expression “American dream” maintains that the world is made up of at least two types of individuals: wolves and sheep. Wolves aim to rise to glory by climbing over bodies, carcasses and mutilated forests when necessary. The sheep aim to rent their labor power for a well-paid job. From this logic emerge the Donald Trumps of life – when they navigate the peaks of high society – or the Pablo Escobars – when they emerge from the illicit underworld – illicit because they navigate other rules of the game on the margins of that society.
Both examples are empowered by the logic of capital and their reflections are the luxurious buildings that shadow the homeless drug addicts roaming the streets stealing cell phones to survive. This is São Paulo, New York, Paris, Berlin and many others.
2.
Just as Hiroshima and Nagasaki are engraved in the memories of these generations of the 20th century, Benjamin Netanahyu is the enormous explosion in the 21st century of predatory bestiality that exposes in an exposed fracture the putrefied reality of the North American empire, which has in Israel its advanced military base to subdue the Middle East and sustain the petrodollar standard.
It is the support of the “American dream”: if you don’t support me, you are against me and I will destroy you. The achievement of rationality – which freed human beings from muteness and gave them the conditions to exercise dominion over nature – coexists with its stupidity that saturates the planet with military bases, nuclear missiles and surveillance and attack satellites.
In this tragic period of history, what concepts should we adopt to think about a renewed utopia? How to conceptualize those who generally call themselves “left-wing”? It is necessary to consider that there is a third type of individual in this broken society: those who see through the fog that obscures the understanding of society, but do not propose to be prey or predator. One that has solidarity, respect for life and the planet, as its fundamental references.
Too generic? No. Having as a goal the elimination of private property and the creation of a classless society, where the means of production are collectively owned and managed and there is an equal distribution of wealth and the elimination of social inequalities is certainly a formulation that meets the these principles, if we add respect for nature. It is therefore necessary to rescue the name “communist” and cleanse this denomination of the damage that was caused by the successive defeats of past revolutions.
The Russian Revolution succumbed to the tensions unleashed by capital. However – just as the West was the first to master atomic fission and extract controlled energy from it – China is managing to master the nuclear fission of capital and extract from it the energy it is capable of generating in human society. The Communist Party of China commands a population of 1.4 billion people, has 100 million members and thousands of capitalists carrying out their activities under government control.
With an iron fist – and without electoral competition external to the party itself – it controls the growth of capitalist activities according to the policies elected at its congresses. And democracy? It exists within the scope of the PCC. We deal with the famous dictatorship of the proletariat. It is a society that claims to be socialist and is in full progress, advancing quickly towards the objectives that we highlighted above.
Even so, its campaigns to combat corruption – the most ferocious virus in capital – targeted both high-ranking figures and lower-level officials, leading to the punishment of more than a million party officials. If the Soviet Union gave up politics to try to save its nations and succumbed, China gave up – in a controlled manner – the economy to guarantee political power and, apparently, the original project of the revolution is safe. In Beijing you don't find miserable people and drug addicts wandering the streets.
We can have in China a reference to a socialist society – one that is controlled by a communist project and coexists in its transition with the fully controlled capitalist mode of production. And take as fundamental criteria to qualify something as “left” what comes closest to a communist position: solidarity, respect for life and the planet.
3.
Having posed these questions, we can now discuss Venezuela and its leader Nicolás Maduro. Before any consideration, Nicolás Maduro proposed to contest an election and gave the opposition the right to participate. Obviously, now with the election over, Nicolás Maduro needs to present the results of this scrutiny. The accusations that imperialism and the global right are maneuvering to create a political crisis are true, but they do not solve the problem. After all, Nicolás Maduro holds not only the State, but power. Either Nicolás Maduro proves that he won the elections, or he proclaims the seizure of the Venezuelan State in defense of its revolutionary process.
And “the left”, how are they? According to all the considerations we have made, it is necessary to check to what extent the Venezuelan process obeys those principles, so that the communists can then declare that they support Nicolás Maduro's Bolivarian revolution.
If there is no such agreement, support can even be expressed, but then support restricted to the condition of a Venezuela that is solely anti-imperialist. Which is very little if we think about the reality of its people and if we think that we could be dealing with a military caste entrenched in power demanding unrestricted solidarity from those who are “on the left”. Wolves in power.
And then we will have another North Korea, now in Latin America. And the erosion of our principles and values will continue to suffer from these tactical gains.
*Artur Scavone is a journalist and holds a master's degree in philosophy from USP.
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