By LUIZ MARQUES*
Progressives must translate the Jacobin mantra to challenge the hearts and minds of the population as a whole today
The concept of “community” can refer either to a certain social group or to the characteristics and values shared by its members. It can also equate to “public interest” and “common good”. From the notion of community it is possible to deconstitute the individualist and atomist scheme of classical liberalism, which supports the neoliberalism of Society of Mont Pélerin (Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman). However, it is a polysemic concept.
The construct of individualism falsifies the existence of individuals, who only develop in interaction with others, in a community. The teaching-learning and belonging process happens collectively. The individual is not a lone wolf in a capitalist jungle, participating in a “war of all against all”. The fiction of neoliberal ideology seeks to justify the dogma that “individual freedom” should not be sacrificed even in the name of the collective. It is a model of individuality without empathy for the suffering of others. The violation of health rules during the pandemic (masks, social isolation) uncovers the lid, with self-sufficient attitudes.
Conceptions derived from this theoretical matrix abstract the actors from real life and take on an unrealistic and inconsistent appearance. Fantasy embodies the bias of the free market and entrepreneurship in the ideological pantomime at the service of capitalist accumulation. The social nature of humans is an undisputed fact. Wisdom requires us to think about society based on the institutions and communities that form the social order – traditional and modern. The rest is pure narcissism, tempered by ignorance.
It is an unlikely task to apprehend individuals outside of a context, without the paradigms of justice and the exercise of socially consensual practical reason. Conviviality gives a communitarian character to the human dimension. Necropolitics breaks the connection between individuals and the community and replaces spaces of diversity with closed condominiums, the privatization of parks and the construction of luxury outposts to invest in metropolises, to the detriment of social housing and environmental care. With increasing gentrification, people lose narrative unity about their existential trajectory and, overcome by fear and absurdity, they take refuge in bubbles hostile to any otherness.
Individual narratives are separated from external reference, the polis. Personal truth becomes the simulacrum of an identity nourished by the desire for an eternal return to a vanished paradise. The crisis in the world of work and formal employment, the weakening of unions and advancement parties, added to the continuous loss of employment by workers and the middle class due to technological innovations generates resentment. Persecutory and conspiratorial assertions about socioeconomic problems lead to the invention of culprits by neofascism. Immigration, communism, feminism, anti-racism and secularism serve as scapegoats.
Collective intellectual
The community does not refer to the entire population of a country, but to the inhabitants of the village, village, quilombola, university, national or international organization. More than a structure, what unites the members of a community is emotion. Ethnic and sexist persecution awakens the unity of the stigmatized. Subjective bonds absorb the losses, but also the dreams of humanism necessary for the courageous constitution of a collective identity, with the hope of the indispensable.
Following Ferdinand Tönnies, the term community (Community) indicates an integrated, pre-industrial, small-scale representation, supported by kinship, friendship and neighborhood, opposed to society (Society) understood as an association with impersonal, contractual bonds, typical of the modern industrial constellation. The first brings a romantic vision, of emotional cohesion, while the second suggests the shadows of anonymity, isolation and alienation.
Historically, the community either anchors the “feeling” or the “meaning” alluding to a symbolic nucleus, which is recognized in opposition to other communities. Benedict Anderson projects an “imagined” entity founded on communal life to describe the origins of nationalism. In fact, despite the difficulty of establishing a univocal understanding, the community appears in current political speeches and religious preaching, invariably with a positive connotation.
The word also circulates to designate social relations within the geographic scope of Brazilian favelas. In this sense, the simple enunciation of the community rescues historical struggles for access to the urbanity that already exists on the asphalt. The brutality of the police, militias and organized crime is interpreted as an attack on the integrity of residents. The historical-cultural group criticizes class society and the privileges that deepen inequities and injustices.
The implicit assumption is that of a homogeneous articulation of peripheral agglomerations. A blank slate is made of the differences between the oppressed and the exploited. More or less like the Communards that appear in the memory of socialists, without internal disputes. The energy and resilience of the old battles for emancipation look forward to future endeavors, with increased experience. This is how what Antonio Gramsci called “collective intellectual” is formatted. The strength of the organized community goes far beyond the “new prince” (the party), in the transformation of the unformed masses into a “nation-people”.
The underlying discussion concerns the factors that influence political consciousness. The feeling and meaning of community sociability contribute to raising the perception of the paths to a dignified life collectively. Organizational and connective activities encourage structural changes. The counteroffensive of the subordinate seeks to correct systemic inequalities and establish the conditions of private and public happiness with the democratic right to have rights, of the invisible.
Yes, we believe
As linguistic beings, we must bear in mind that statements put attack versus defense movements into action. In the duel of social and political fascism against sociopolitical democracy, the left will win the 2024 elections if it vibrates the spirit of community solidarity to confront mega-construction companies and aporophobia (hatred of the poor). The electoral campaign needs to cross the threshold of presenting a program that simply restores urban belonging. It is up to you to emulate a desire to participate and exemplify each advertisement in a different and promising reality. For the extreme right, the “social issue” boils down to repressing the “dangerous classes” to keep them at bay.
The case of Porto Alegre, where the Popular Front maintained four consecutive terms (1989-2004) under siege by the Washington Consensus, is evocative. Affection and passion for public affairs drive republican enthusiasm and solidarity with the destiny of equals. With the brand of Participatory Budgeting (OP), a pedagogical instrument for the inclusion of segments excluded from politics, civilizing benefits are achieved. Equipment qualifies vulnerable regions with basic sanitation (from 3% to 35%), health centers, schools, access to transport, sidewalks, dignity. In the floods, the total collapse of the state and municipal system showed the importance of an active community.
The epicenter of the climate disaster in the global South is, ditto, the capital of resistance in the Movement for Legality (1961), of ecology thanks to the founding of the Gaúcha Association for the Protection of the Natural Environment (AGAPAN, 1971) and the combative headquarters of the World Social Forum (FSM, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2005). In toxic anti-politics, good politics does not come from empty promises. It comes from empowering those who are seen as objects rather than subjects of politics. Welcoming the marginalized in participatory channels to decide about the city is the antidote to alienation – a vote for citizenship.
“I don’t shrink my hand: I move forward / carrying a bouquet of sunshine / the life that goes with me / is fire: it’s always lit”, states Thiago de Mello, in the book It's dark but I sing. The poet's verses condense the spirit of the legionnaires of utopia to overthrow the patrimonialism of the backward rulers, along with the clientelism and physiologism of the Legislatures, with transparency and probity in dealing with the Treasury. A feat that comes up against the appropriation of scandalous millionaire funds, in secret, in the Federal Chamber. Rastaquera semi-presidentialism joins forces with the Central Bank's undermining of Brazil.
As Maximilien de Robespierre decrees, in his speech on April 24, 1793: “Toute institution that ne suppose pas le peuple bon et le magistrat corruptible est vicieuse” (Every institution that does not presuppose the good people and the corruptible magistrate is perverted). Two hundred years later, there is no one who does not understand the revolutionary leader's warning. Progressives must translate the Jacobin mantra to challenge the hearts and minds of the population as a whole today. Awareness emerges in the struggle, identity grows hand in hand, victory comes by the people and for the people. Yes, we believe.
* Luiz Marques is a professor of political science at UFRGS. He was Rio Grande do Sul's state secretary of culture in the Olívio Dutra government.
the earth is round there is thanks to our readers and supporters.
Help us keep this idea going.
CONTRIBUTE
