Marxism and the Māori Sovereignty Movement – A Māori communist perspective (Voices of Women and Gender Minorities)

September 21, 2015 by

Article originally published in Fightback magazine’s special issue dedicated to paid radical writing by women and gender minorities.

By Huriana Kopeke-Te Aho.

The influence of Marxist theory and particularly Marx’s theory of alienation and capitalist political economy on the Māori sovereignty movement during the 1970’s is important to examine and I would also like to consider the contemporary relevance of these ideas for Tino Rangatiratanga (Māori political autonomy). Marx clarifies the exploitative relationship underpinning the political and economic system of capitalism. The themes of subjugation, oppression and enslavement that are necessary within a capitalist political economy are common to the process of colonisation and the relationship between the coloniser and the colonised and indeed still feature in the contemporary neo-colonial struggle. The arms of colonisation reach backwards and forwards in time, creating a struggle that we as Māori are born into. Our destiny and our legacy is one of resistance rather than acceptance and passive submission.

Capitalism relies on the exploitation of labour, this then leads to alienation. Marx’s theory of alienation is anchored in the positioning of human beings as conscious creative beings. Marx called this uniquely human capacity for creation ‘species-being’. Marx distinguished us from other living beings by our ability to perform ‘conscious’ labour. Through the act of change and transformation of our environment we change ourselves in the process.  In Marx’s theory, capitalism creates and relies upon the construct of alienation. Furthermore, the invention of social class which flourishes under capitalism, relies on the creation of a working class and a ruling class or the bourgeoisie who own the means of production and the proletariat who create profit for the bourgeoisie through their labour. In this economic process, the worker is dehumanised, so much so that they become little more than a means of production, a unit of labour to be bought and sold as capital.

Marx further separated the construct of alienation into four key concepts that together, made a unified theory of labour exploitation. In the process of alienation the worker becomes firstly, alienated from his fellow workers/social relations being subverted into a singular unit of production. Secondly, the individual becomes alienated from the process of creative labour through the commodification of the outcomes of their labour and themselves in the process of creating for another.   Thirdly, the individual becomes alienated from the product of their labour as they no longer own their own creativity or the product of their work, and lastly, they become alienated from their own essential nature or “species essence” (Seeman, 1975).

However, it is important not to conceptualise exploitation as merely an unjust part of the capitalist system. In point of fact, Subjugation and the class struggle are an integral and vitally important component of the capitalist system.  The class struggle is an intrinsic and permanent feature of the political economy of capitalism, as is the use of the police and judiciary to enforce this system against resistance from the exploited and colonisation itself is built on a racist oppressive relationship that produces the alienation of indigenous peoples from themselves. The realities of colonisation and the colonial legacy which traverses generations producing contemporary impacts in the form of pervasive inequities and inequalities has fuelled and continues to fuel indigenous political activism (Fanon, 1965; Walker, 1989).  Memmi (1965) asserted that on realising their oppressed state, the colonised have two choices – rebellion or assimilation. Assimilation requires the absolute rejection and denial of themselves, their indigenous value systems, worldviews and lifeways. In order to assimilate, the colonised must enter in a willing state of self-loathing, despising everything about themselves that hinders their conversion into and emulation of, the model of the ‘coloniser’. Fanon (1965) maintains that after failed attempts to be like the coloniser, the only recourse for the colonised upon fully realising that they will never be acceptable to the coloniser is rebellion. In Fanon’s analysis, rebellion is inevitable as it is in a Marxist analysis. Marx’s theory of historical materialism further informs the indigenous struggles against the artefacts of colonisation. In a contemporary analysis the litany of theft and dispossession of land and resources throughout the indigenous world, ignites the fire of resistance and struggle with the goal being the reclaiming of the power and authority to be self-determining (Alfred, 2005; Churchill, 2002).

An extension on the scholarship of Alfred and Churchill is offered by Rata (2006) who conducts an analysis of the construction of indigenous tribal elites which can be likened to a brown bourgeoisie.  In Rata’s analysis, the resistance to tribal domination, constructs a new struggle which can be understood through Marx’s theory of alienation only this time, the struggle is to be freed from alienation from within the tribal culture and collective (Rata, 2009). This is the internalisation and application of the role of the coloniser to further disempower the colonised. More recent applications of the struggle for self-determination, places this struggle at once as a reassertion of indigenous rights as well as a shifting of the fight towards increasingly powerful Māori tribal leadership. The enemy is identified as one that which resides ‘within’. It is however important to recall the process of colonisation and the development of historical intergenerational trauma which still winds its way through the lives of indigenous peoples today creating a vulnerability that causes blindness to the real source of the struggle. In this new struggle, the capacity to hold on to the underpinning role of colonisation in the dispossession of Māori should never be lost sight of or the potency of the struggle underestimated (Churchill, 2003).

In his book Kā Whāwhai Tonu Mātou, Walker examines the ongoing resistance of Māori to colonisation. The resistance movement took as a component of its early inspiration, Marxist theories including alienation and the exploitation of the ‘worker’ for the benefit of the ‘owner’ under capitalism. Marx provided our predecessors in the resistance movement with a way of understanding the impacts of capitalist expansionism which was a characteristic of colonisation, on the contemporary position of Māori.  The resistance to colonisation is an ongoing struggle as potent for many today as it was when the first colonisers set foot on Aotearoa in 1769.

However, much has changed in the way in which our struggle takes place today. Iwi have become the new elites (Rata 1997) and what was once a clear struggle between coloniser and colonised, has become further complicated with  the coloniser having a brown face as the economics of Treaty settlements are giving them license to look and act like capitalists and crown agents.  The illusion that we are subscribing to is that by adopting capitalism as our modus operandi in the long march towards self-determination, we can secure freedom for generations to come, changing the system from within.  Have we forgotten that capitalism with the attendant greed for land and resources, fuelled colonisation? And now that many iwi have signed ‘full and final’ treaty settlements, the danger is that hard-won resources will not last and future generations will be left with nothing. Capitalism is one of the tools of colonisation and while our ancestors were highly successful entrepreneurs, we were a collective society, whose actions were based on what was best for the collective iwi, hapu and whanau.  It was always with the collective good at the center of the uptake of new technology and ways of trading.

The contribution Marxist theory makes to indigenous struggles for freedom is rooted in Marxist discourse on historical materialism (Hokowhitu, 2010) and the ongoing contemporary effects of historically established economic and political systems which continue to feed inequities in all aspects of Māori lives today (Reid & Robson, 2007). It is the inevitability of the struggle for freedom from the shackles of the powerful that render Marx’s theory so powerful in indigenous human rights movements around the world.

Filed Under: Maori, Oppression & Liberation, Theory Tagged With:

Finding a Future for Women in Green Technology (Voices of Women and Gender Minorities)

September 19, 2015 by

Originally published in Fightback magazine’s special issue dedicated to paid writing by women and gender minorities.

Maria is a freelance writer currently living in Chicago. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago with a minor in Communication. She blogs about environmentally friendly tips, technological advancements, and healthy active lifestyles.

Today, as throughout all of history, women are paid less than men for performing identical tasks in the workplace. In some instances, they are almost completely barred from entering into their chosen profession. The tech industry is one such example of a space in which where both jobs and prestige are disproportionately held by men. In this field, women continue to face hurdles both securing entry-level positions and gaining the recognition they deserve once they secure a more advanced role.

A number of high-profile cases have drawn attention to tech industry gender discrimination. The best known case may be that of Ellen Pao, who worked for venture capitalist firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in Silicon Valley. She filed a lawsuit against her former employer, stating that she was unjustly passed over for promotions, seually harassed, and ultimately fired. Although that lawsuit was eventually dismissed, it continues to draw attention to the more important issue at hand. In another case, former Facebook employee Chia Hong filed a lawsuit against the social media giant for race and gender-based harassment. Female tech workers have repeatedly noted that they are judged for their personality rather than their work performance, which should be a red flag in ANY industry.  

Though small in number, there are several companies echoing these women’s voices for greater equality in tech specifically. An American company, PowerToFly, was launched by a pair of mothers who recognized the need for home-based opportunities for women. The company provides women with networking opportunities and online support, challenging the cultural norms that dictate a working woman’s family life. A non-profit company known as the Ada Initiative also offers support for women around the world interested in open source coding and technology. Beyond it’s efforts at home in Canada, the Ada Initiative has run six AdaCamps in four countries. This feminist tech camp opens doors for hundreds of women each year that may have otherwise stayed permanently shut.

Supporting women’s involvement, investment, and leadership in tech careers is crucial, and this is particularly evident in the “green” tech sector. While there are several big names making corrective action – Lisa P. Jackson, for example, who works for Apple as vice president of Environmental Initiatives, is a former American EPA administrator with a strong track record in sustainability efforts – we are still sorely lacking a diverse representation of sex and race in cleantech decision making. Many people are unaware of the renewable energy options available to them; and while resources like this and this aim to inform, it’s in no one’s best interest to have only a fraction of the world’s voices represented in finding cleaner, “greener” solutions. Other inspirational women of note, such as Nawal Al-Hosany, the director of both the Zayed Future energy prize and sustainability at Masdar, and Sandrine Dixson Decleve, who directs the Prince of Wales’s EU Corporate Leaders Group to promote eco-friendly policies in Brussels, cannot stand alone in making a change.

The problem is not a new one. Historically, the entire tech field has been dominated by men, and it will take more than a several years and a few fresh faces to make up for decades of inaction and missed opportunities. At major research universities, men hold a staggering 86 percent of all computer science undergraduate degrees. And to add insult to injury, the percent of women holding degrees in computer science actually dropped from 37 percent to 18 percent between 1985 and 2010.

As the success of green technology is vital to the preservation of our resources and our planet, the current state of ongoing gender bias has to go. When half of the population is denied access to one of the most powerful industries, responsible for shaping the lives of all the world’s inhabitants, there is more than enough justification for alarm. Technology, when used at its best, can span boundaries of race, class, and gender. Bright minds, male and female, are needed to both recognize and harness its potential to push for better “green” ideas. Climate change does not discriminate – a diversification of both educational programs and the green tech workforce is what the Earth and all future generations deserve.

Filed Under: Oppression & Liberation Tagged With:

Iran: We will turn Shahrokh Zamani’s death into the banner of workers’ solidarity and unity

September 18, 2015 by

Political-prisoners-in-Gohardasht-Prison

translation from: revolutionary-socialism.com, revised by Daphne Lawless

Shahrokh Zamani, a brave and tireless fighter for the Iranian workers’ movement, has died in Gohar Dasht prison. The news was received with total disbelief and utter shock by all. In our view, whatever reasons the authorities may offer, the responsibility for his death lies completely with those who have imposed conditions of slavery on the workers of Iran and have taken away their rights to organise and struggle for a better life; and with those who throw honourable and valiant human beings such as Shahrokh Zamani into dungeons.

The shocking news of his death in jail, without any prior history of illness, is not the first news of such a loss of life of a prisoner, and given the current conditions in the country’s jails, will not be the last. This untimely death will naturally appear suspicious to any unbiased person. But even without any such suspicions, the conditions in prisons, especially for worker activists and political prisoners, are already murderous enough for a thousand and one reasons – from microwave torture to unsuitable food, from inadequate sanitation to absence of medical care, from unhealthy living quarters to every kind of mental and psychological pressure.

Shahrokh Zamani had committed no crime other than defending the rights of his fellow workers. He had no official position, he had not defrauded any one, he had not harmed anybody and he was not a partner to any thieves or highway robbers. He was a building worker and a member of the Committee for the Establishment of Independent Trade Unions, a member of the co-ordinating committee for re-starting the Paint Workers’ Syndicate and an honorary member of the Paint Workers’ Syndicate of Alborz and the Central Province, and its founding mentor.

He was thrown into jail in 2011 for defending workers rights, but for a brave fighter such as Shahrokh, prison did not mean an end to struggle. In his almost 5 years of imprisonment, from his two-man cell at Gohardasht prison, he never stopped struggling and fighting for just causes until his last breath. Jails, courts, repression, and pressure from the security forces and jailers could not silence Shahrokh. With his unrivalled braveness and steadfastness, and without an iota of self promotion, he was the real symbol of Iranian workers’ resistance and struggle for liberation from oppression and exploitation.

The death of Shahrokh is an irreplaceable loss for his family and friends and for the workers’ movement as a whole. We are sincerely sorry for this great loss and declare our sympathies with his family, friends, his fellow prisoners and workers all over the country. But despite this unbearable pain, we will not retreat into our sorrow and we will turn his death into the banner of workers’ solidarity and unity.

Long live workers’ unity and solidarity!

We salute you, Shahrokh Zamani!

The list of signatories in alphabetic order:

Haft Tappeh Sugar Cane Workers’ Syndicate;

Paint Workers’ syndicate of Alborz Province;

The Centre for the Defence of Workers Rights;

The Committee for the Establishment of Independent Trade Unions;

The Co-ordinating Committee for Establishing Independent Workers Organisations;

The Co-ordinating Committee for Restarting Tehran Paint Workers Syndicate;

The Free Trade Union of Workers in Iran.

Filed Under: International

Organising Against All Oppressions (Voices of Women and Gender Minorities)

September 17, 2015 by

Article originally published in Fightback magazine’s special issue dedicated to paid writing by women and gender minorities.

By Kim McBreen.

Talking and thinking critically about our experiences, goals and strategies are important parts of organising.  All of our activism must be consistent with our long term goals, but there are often contradictions.  This article will look at examples of short term approaches moving us further from our long term goals, and alternative paths suggested by US group INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence.  Focusing on the experiences of women of colour exposes many contradictions in common approaches, allowing more holistic strategies for dismantling oppression.  

Organising against violence
Whether it is patriarchy, the criminal justice system, colonisation or poverty, oppression is violence.  And these oppressions interact.  When we treat oppressions separately, we ignore that their interactions make some populations far more vulnerable to violence, and we risk contributing to that violence.  For example, when organisations working against family violence lobby the State to bring in harsher punishments, they ignore the combination of patriarchy, white supremacy and classism within the criminal justice system.  The result entrenches existing power structures and actually increases violence against those most vulnerable by increasing their exposure to the State.  Where organisations working against prisons focus on the experience of men in the criminal justice system, they ignore the different experiences of marginalised genders in that system, as well as the need for real community safety and accountability.  Again this only entrenches existing structures of power.  Such organising is both unappealing and dangerous to those who know most about oppression.  

US prison abolition group Critical Resistance and INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence argue that anti-violence and prison abolition movements must come together to fight all violence:

“activists/ movements that address state violence often work in isolation from activists/ movements that address domestic and sexual violence.  The result is that women of color, who suffer disproportionately from both state and interpersonal violence have become marginalized within these movements.  It is critical that we develop responses to gender violence that do not depend on a sexist, racist, classist, and homophobic criminal justice system.  It is also important that we develop strategies that challenge the criminal justice system and that also provide safety for survivors of sexual and domestic violence.  To live violence free lives, we must develop holistic strategies for addressing violence that speak to the intersection of all forms of oppression” (INCITE & Critical Resistance 2001).

Our communities desperately need strategies that make all of us safer, but our work to dismantle one oppression must not strengthen another.  By bringing our understanding of oppressions together to see how they re-enforce each other, we are better able to tear them all down.  Uniting anti-violence and prison abolition organisations has resulted in a new approach based on building community accountability, and has created a new movement.  There have been several books, huge conferences, and now many organisations tackle violence in a holistic way based on this work.  
Organising against white supremacy
Andrea Smith (2006 and 2010) looked at ways that white supremacy pits communities of colour against each other, giving them a stake in racism.  She identifies three pillars supporting white supremacy in the US:

  1. Capitalism depends on the logic of slavery.  Slavery commodified Black people.  “[T]he capitalist system ultimately commodifies all workers: one’s own person becomes a commodity that one must sell in the labour market while the profits of one’s work are taken by somebody else. . . . [T]he logic of slavery applies a racial hierarchy to this system. . . . Anti-blackness enables people who are not black to accept their lot in life because they can feel that at least they are not at the very bottom of the racial hierarchy—at least they are not property” (Smith 2010).
  2. Colonisation depends on the logic of genocide, requiring Indigenous peoples to disappear.  “[N]on-Native peoples then become the rightful inheritors of all that was indigenous—land, resources, indigenous spirituality, or culture” (Smith 2006).  Dying is the ultimate disappearance, but Indigenous people are also made invisible when they are not recognised as ‘really Māori’ because they don’t look or behave how we expect.    
  3. In the West, war depends on the logic of orientalism—specific peoples, nations and religions are framed as a constant threat.  Our borders must be protected.  New Zealand supports imperialist wars and frames ‘asian immigration’ as dangerous.  Both direct our attention from ongoing colonisation and other state violence.  

“What keeps us trapped within our particular pillars of white supremacy is that we are seduced by the prospect of being able to participate in the other pillars” (Smith 2010).  This has implications for how we organise against specific forms of white supremacy, such as colonisation, anti-immigration, and other anti-asian, -Māori or -Pasifika racism.  With limited knowledge of others’ experiences, we risk gaining small victories for one group, while entrenching white supremacy overall.  We need relationships and accountability to other communities—solidarity that allows us to “check our aspiration against the aspirations of other communities to ensure our model of liberation does not become the model of oppression for others” (Smith 2006).

Models for Organising

Liberalism has become so normalised, we often find ourselves fighting for a less awful system, rather than for a world we actually want.  There are many ways that our energy is diverted away from dismantling oppression and towards making cosmetic changes to oppression.  

A common pathway for activists is from organising on an issue, to developing an organisation or programme providing a much needed service, that then becomes increasingly dependent on external funding and state support, and therefore respectability.  State funding is dangerous, but so too is support from large philanthropic trusts: “While the [prison industrial complex] overtly represses dissent, the [non-profit industrial complex] manages and controls dissent by incorporating it into the state apparatus” (Smith 2009).  Funders have influenced the direction of movements using grants, leadership courses and career pathways to lure activists into service delivery rather than movement building, and to change the focus of organisations from structural change to individual relief, from revolutionary to reformist goals.  It becomes harder to fight the structures of power when we depend on their money.  

For example, when we see children going to school hungry, a service model would focus on how to get the money to feed the children.  This is a simple solution, but by positioning ourselves outside the community, we risk framing children as the problem and the State as the solution, whereas State and capitalist violence are the actual problems.  A revolutionary model recognises these communities as experts on poverty and State violence.  Who better to dismantle oppression?  We need solutions that meet our immediate needs, and that also move us towards that goal.  This requires community mobilisation.  

“To radically change society, we must build mass movements that can topple systems of domination, such as capitalism.  However, the [non-profit industrial complex] encourages us to think of social justice as a career. . . . However, a mass movement requires the involvement of millions of people, most of whom cannot get paid.  By trying to do grassroots organizing through this careerist model, we are essentially asking a few people to work more than full-time to make up for the work that needs to be done by millions” (Smith 2009).  The service provider model has taken power away from collective organising, and invested that power with funders and service providers.  

Each of these three examples has led to new ways of organising.  Together, they show that those most oppressed have the most effective strategies for dismantling oppression, and that the more we reflect and talk together about our experiences and dreams for the future, the sooner we’ll get it done.

(For further reading, see The Color of Violence, The Revolution Starts at Home, and The Revolution Will Not be Funded, all published by South End Press)

Filed Under: Oppression & Liberation Tagged With:

UK: Pessimism after Corbyn

September 15, 2015 by

corbyn points

Article reprinted from Salvage (UK).

By The Editors, 14th September 2015.

Anyone, of any politics, who does not start by acknowledging the profundity of this shock is a bullshitter. For the first time since George Lansbury, the Labour Party has a leader who is both a socialist and an experienced activist. He did not win by the skin of his teeth, nor by fluke: his crushing 59.5% first-round win – coupled with a miserable 4.5% for the hard Blairite Liz Kendall – is a demolition job on the entrenched Labour elite. Nor is his win merely due to support in the unions, or from the influx of registered supporters – though he won 57.6% and 83.8% of these votes respectively – he also gained 49.6% of votes from full members; a full 26.9% ahead of his nearest rival. In a few short months, Corbyn has radically shifted the balance of power that has obtained in the Labour Party since the end of the Miners’ Strike.

This is not a shallow electoral victory. It was evident after the first month of the Corbyn campaign that something was up. The crowds he drew, the social media buzz, suggested that he might make a heroic attempt not to end last. By the time of the first poll, he was in first place. The second poll had him winning by almost as handsome a margin as he ultimately achieved. As he zig-zagged across the country to address packed halls, his stunned rivals struggled and failed to reclaim the initiative, their empty babble attesting to the ideological vacuity and political enervation of the New Labour project and its various progeny.

For now, we dine on #blairitetears. We savour the astonishing victory, even as the Blairite media rabble incontinently deluges us with bitterness, spite and panic. We glory in the dismay of the political class and its media circuit, from the feeble right-wing fearmongering (‘Corbyn scary man woooo’) to the mannered liberal drollery attempting to devalue the outcome by means of a stolen and bowdlerised anti-oppression politics. We see you, Blairites, crying crocodile tears over ‘brocialism’, and you do not fool us.

We stand with Labour Party members who, sick of the contempt of their betters, of being treated as an inconvenience to be shushed while the grown-ups are talking, have hit the undemocratic, managerial caste running their party squarely where it hurts. We unstintingly celebrate this ‘Oxi’ to austerity, to triangulation, to managed politics, to Project Fear, to the neoliberal consensus. In a political field engineered for the endless recursion of the same, where any surprise stands out, this is an actual victory.

However, as the reference to ‘Oxi’ implies, this is also a moment for sobriety. We will not be equal to the challenges to come if we once again lurch from despondency to bad hope – we have seen where this ends. Salvage’s answer to such unproductive careening remains a hard-won pessimism. This is neither cynicism nor hopelessness: it is about our clear-sighted analysis – of capitalism, of the class system, of the centrality of this antagonism to our lives – that we refuse to gloss over the scale of the difficulties we continue to face. Our pessimism, far from the libidinised wallowing in despair that characterises the emos of the ultra-left, is historically founded. It is grounded in a realistic appreciation of the limits of the Left’s institutional, social and organisational power, the erosion and destruction of the traditional loci of working class power. And it is grounded in a recognition of the influence of neoliberalism on popular ideology. These factors have not disappeared, even if they are obscured by the magnitude of Corbyn’s victory.

There is war coming in the Labour Party. Already, the bad-faith resignations and rumour-mongering of leading right-wingers signals the scale of resistance Corbyn will face. And that struggle will refract through its own institutional and ideological character the conflict that cleaves society as a whole, that between exploiter and exploited, between oppressor and oppressed. And the odds in that conflict remain stacked heavily in favour of the habitual victors. The Labour right have been caught off-guard, exhausted, and weakened by the loss of a major bastion of their power the size of Scotland. Ironically, the very processes of Pasokification that threaten the survival of Labourism as a serious force are also responsible for the chinks in the armour of the old guard, which have allowed Corbyn and his allies to make this audacious dash for power. But, also ironically, Corbyn’s very victory, in its shattering of their complacent, internalised claim that There Is No Alternative (to them and their project), will galvanise the Labour right. They will not forgive this humiliation. Numb inertia is no longer their instrument: they will have to remember how to fight again. And remember they very soon will.

When their onslaught begins in earnest, they will be fighting with the party machinery at their disposal. They will be fighting with the press on their side, with the Tories as tacit allies, with business at their backs. They will have the support of the civil service and the state apparatuses. They will undoubtedly benefit from Clockwork Orange-style deep-state intrigue. But, far more fundamentally, they will benefit from the fact that Corbyn is obliged to work with a parliamentary party that is overwhelmingly hostile to what he wishes to achieve, and is apt either to force him to make damaging compromises, or to engineer habitual crises for him, or both. For his part Corbyn, being committed to the ‘broad church’ conception of the party, has already signalled through his cabinet appointments that he is aware of this balance of forces and the relative isolation of he and his allies in the places where it counts.

The task that Corbyn and his supporters face, like that which faces the Left more generally, is not just a question of taking advantage of the occasional opportunities that present themselves, as important as they are, but is a matter of having a realistic appraisal of the overwhelming forces arrayed against us, our historical weakness, and our need to tenaciously and patiently reconstruct the forces of the working-class movement from the grassroots up. The weakening of the representative link and the erosion of traditional forms of political control in neoliberalised democracies will occasionally – and unexpectedly – give rise to unique opportunities for weakly rooted forces to make dramatic advances – as with Syriza, as with Podemos, as with Corbyn. But the ground for these occasional leaps must be prepared, in order that they be sustainable. In Greece we are witnessing what happens when that is not the case.

It is natural and healthy that, having been apprised of the Left’s supposed death since 1989 – ‘End of History’ and all that – many on the Left are anxious to break the coffin lid. But one of the worst aspects of traditional Left boosterism is that, in failing to acknowledge the scale of our previous defeats and their legacy, it prepares every hopeful new recruit not for years of patient work, but for rapid burn-out and demoralisation. At such moments of real victory, the philistine and panicked ‘optimism’ of the unreflective Left, the Bad Hope that, in its moralized hyperactivism, so often enables the very short-cuts that undermine the necessary work, is prone to instant phase-shift into Bad Despair. There is no point in surging to life, only to fall back more permanently and numerously into the sepulchres.

Salvage cleaves to the necessity of a pessimism that is not a nostrum but a result of analysis, and urges others on the left to approach this battle with the same sober caution. Aspiring to such rigour is not merely a responsibility in these circumstances, it is energising. Salvage counsels a pessimism that has the humility to be surprised, to celebrate the shocks of our victories without surrendering the caution we – all – need. And we proceed in the utter and committed desire – theSehnsucht – to be proven wrong.

Filed Under: Uncategorized
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