The Old Gods are watching
The lack of a strong left-wing voice in European debate over the shifting of global geopolitical powers and the role of global institutions is a sad reality all across the globe. Except for single politician or journalist voices, socialists, social-democrats or progressives are barely heard. Meanwile, the Old Gods of the XX century see that, and they are watching.
The outbreak of armed conflict in Ukraine saw a cascade of new – or just polished as new but as old as imperialism – discourses among far-right and liberal influencers. From YouTube to Twitter, everyone was amazed how swiftly the so-called “End of History” was burned to ashes. Now they occupy themselves with painting the new world order, new strategies and future alliances. They are also calling for militarization and new forms of neoliberalism, that could endure the upcoming global production chaos.
Among the left, at the same time, everyone was more preoccupied with symbolic, Shakespearean gestures. Do we support Ukraine or not? Do we stand for sending arms or not? Like some caricatural Hamlets, we have been asking ourselves those questions publicly, still unable to come at a kind of common cohesive position. No surprise nobody has taken us seriously.
But the fact is, whether we want or not – the war is raging. The new 20′ are set to the play of neoliberalist imperialism.
As my friend Assaf Adiv, a Palestinian trade union activist said – Clinton was a crime, now Putin is the punishment. In those words, we grasp in short the whole process of what has been going on in the areas of geopolitics but also economy. On one hand, we had the USA, a self-proclaimed police officer, who thought that he could project power from deserts of Iraq to the valleys of Afghanistan, with methods that would have been labelled terrorism had anyone else resorted to them. On the other hand, we saw a rise of oligarchs, Murdochs, Bezos and Tesla in the West, Sauds, Abramovich and Potanin in the East. Add to this list also China’s grey eminences whose best representant was and still is Vladimir Putin. All these guys play their own games and do not really care for anything apart from their own business.
And what do we do? Standing somewhere and hamletising: this is a democracy, that is authoritarian regime. Isn’t it like supporting French republic in 1915? Supporting it just because it was a republic, not a Kaiser Reich, and closing the eyes that it was – in exactly the same way as its enemies – pushing millions of people into the grinder of death?
The answer for all of that is clearer than it has ever been in the last years. We need war against the mode of production that is taking us in the direction of climate hecatomb. Not war against other working ordinary people, who just want some bread and who are searching for a sense of life. Like we all do.
Old Gods of imperialism and capital accumulation are waking up, sensing that it is time act in order to preserve their enormous powers. And they do. Who could have imagined that the mission on Mars would have been an enterprise of capitalistic maniacs, not a united humankind?
All the stories we have heard about the end of history that brings about the end of global hunger, the end of wars, and poverty… All of them were just a hoax, and we are not the only ones now to agree on that.
The people’s struggle is real and will become more and more turbulent in the upcoming years, but what will it look like without left-wingers advocating for a new global deal and unity of humankind?
We have to wake up. It is time to be proud to represent ourselves, our own ideas and values, without looking into the dark side of contemporaneity and picking up some slogans from it. It makes no change just to say “fuck off NATO!” or “let’s overthrow Putin!” and then feel accomplished. Nothing is accomplished.
For that we need a unity in discussion and a willingness to meet each other, virtually or in person, and work, work, and once more work together. And then act together on the continental and global stage. The need for a new congress, new coalitions and new discussion among European leftists and their international allies is greater than ever.
How we should organise ourselves, how we should cooperate, what should be our aims in the upcoming years? All those questions have to be answered, sooner or later, without that we are leaving the scene for the right-wing populists and warmongers.
We have to get to work. In the end there is no more pleasant feeling than to cooperate with other dreamers on the way to a better world!
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