How China is winning by playing its own game

28 Saturday Apr 2018

Posted by freehaifa in China's Rise, Socialism

Tags

China vs America, Ghost Cities, Market Economy, Socialism, State Intervention in the economy, Trade War, Trump vs Xi

The media is full of news about the trade war that Trump is threatening to unleash against China. President Xi, on his side, is calling for calm and for everybody to play by the rules, but Chinese officials are threatening severe repercussion for everybody in case of a widening conflict.

What is it all about? Is it just that the US is upset about its uneven trade balance with China? Well, nobody forced it to buy Chinese goods… and loan money from China to finance its living beyond its means.

Recent reports by the US administration show that much more is at stake than just the trade balance. They complain about China’s industrial policy, its drive for innovation and development of local tech industry. Special wrath is reserved to China’s flagship international economic policy, titled “The Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI).

In fact, the USA administration and big companies understand, correctly, that by current trends they are losing fast on all fronts: technological leadership, economic power, world hegemony.

Uneven playing ground

Just for being fully transparent, I must admit that I’m not at all neutral in this battle of the US to save its hegemony. For me all the talk in western media about the US representing “freedom” or “liberal values” sounds as sheer hypocrisy. I would welcome any chance that this hegemony will be dented, not least because under USA hegemony the Palestinian people are doomed to stay destitute and enslaved forever. And I’m not blind to the old and new crimes of colonialism, imperialism and neo-liberalism all over the world.

Anyway – I hate war, but I find a lot of fun in the ideological war.

The last twist in the script is that the US and other western powers complain that they are losing in the economic competition against China because of the intervention of the Chinese state.

Well, until yesterday they told us that it is an absolutely objective fact of the science of economics that free capitalist competition is superior to state-managed economy. They would tell us dummies that state planning is not working, so we should give up any dreams of Socialism, and let private capital manage the economy for profit. They would swear that their ugly unjust profit is the only way that Humanity can have economic progress and hope that some material gains will reach all of us humble working people.

I would expect them to pity the poor Chinese people that their government is trying to manage their economy and will soon drive it into a wall…

But, no, they all run to populist Trump and cry for government intervention in order to save them from the economic success of the government-led Chinese economy.

How awful the Chinese government can be?

So, what is the Chinese government doing that is so unfair?

In the 2008 economic crisis, while US banks were busted by greedy bosses, the US government poured millions of taxpayers’ money to save the banks, and the western economies felt into long stagnation. Millions of Chinese workers lost their jobs in export industries. So the Chinese government gave special grants to hundreds of millions of poor peasants to buy electric appliances – to keep the factories working.

Last year the Chinese government’s intervention prevented a world cyclical economic crisis by reducing capacity in the coal and steel industries in a managed way instead.

On April 17^th, 2018, the economist brought just another economic report from China that explains how its government intervention enabled it to overcome some obstacles and keep steady growth. Between the details I found one that seemed to me the best striking example why China’s economic model is so “unfair” that developed capitalist economies just can’t compete with it.

Remember the shocking reports about “ghost cities” in China that filled western media just a few years ago?

In a healthy capitalist economy, when supply outpaces demand, there is a “natural”, “healthy remedy”. It is called an economic crisis. Prices are falling, production is closed, until demand overcomes and prices and production rise again. In the meantime many workers lose their work, many productive forces are destroyed, and a lot of suffering takes place.

The economist’s reporter visited Wuhan, one of the so-called ghost cities, and found it full of life. He explains how the government of China intervened to solve the supply surplus in the housing market. The government bought millions of houses (all over the country) from constructors and gave them to poor people. Problem solved.

You can’t expect honest capitalist companies to compete with such unfair practices.

Talking about Catalan Independence

11 Wednesday Oct 2017

Posted by freehaifa in One World, Political Analysis, Socialism

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Anarchism, Catalan Referendum, Catalan Republic 1934, Catalonia, Francesc Ferrer, Francesc Macià, Homage to Catalonia, Kurdistan Referendum, Lluís Companys, Right of Self Determination, Spanish Civil War, Spanish History

As if the world was lacking problems, with hurricanes and Trump and wars in the Middle East, we had two “new” topics to think about. The referendums about independence in Southern Kurdistan (Northern Iraq) on September 25, 2017, and in Catalonia on October 1, reminded the world about the aspirations of these two peoples.

The initiatives to hold such referendums represent an optimistic approach, a belief that the expression of the will of the people carries a moral weight that may influence political events. But in both cases we also witnessed the refusal of the local and world ruling powers to accept the legitimacy of the referendum. The perspective of conflicts that might get out of control is looming. What is it all about and what does it teach us about the state of the world these days?

I was lucky to meet a distinguished guest in Haifa a few days after the referendum, an intellectual activist from Catalonia. He agreed to help me understand better what is behind the Catalan referendum and how people in Catalonia think about their future as an independent nation. I will try to summarize below what I heard from him as well as the result of some reading and research on my side and deliberations about current discussion of the issue in leftist circles.

The deep roots of Catalan aspirations

Catalonia‘s history as a nation with distinguished language, culture and history goes back many hundreds of years. But the roots of today’s struggle for Catalonian independence can be immediately traced to the harsh history of Spain in the 20^th century. Being industrialized earlier than most of Spain, Catalonia became a hotbed of republican and democratic aspirations, as well as of social movements, with a big role to the trade unions and to anarchist and socialist parties and organizations.

Barricades in Barcelona, 1909. Refusing to oppress rebellious Morocco

During the 1909 “Second Rif War”, waged by Spanish colonialism to oppress liberation struggles in Morocco, anarchists and socialists in Catalonia called for a general strike against forced conscription to the Spanish army. The people of Barcelona took control of the streets, and soldiers from the local units of the army refused to move against their brother workers. Soon army units were sent from other parts of Spain. They crushed the popular uprising by deadly fire, killing about 150 people. Later the Spanish courts ordered the execution of some of the political leaders of the movement, including anarchist thinker Francesc Ferrer.

The repressive dictatorship of Primo De-Rivera, a general who suspended the constitution and ruled Spain with the support of the king between 1923 and 1930, spent special efforts to suppress “separatists” in Catalonia and the Basque country. Economic crisis and mass protest forced the dismantling of the dictatorship and opened the door for the establishment of the “Second Spanish Republic” that lasted from 1931 until it was slaughtered in the bloody 1936-39 civil war by General Franco’s fascist forces.

francesc-macia-on-the-balcony-of-la-generalitat

Francesc Meciá addressing a rally

Just before the republic was declared, on April 1931, after parties supporting Catalan independence won local elections, Catalan republicans led by Francesc Macià declared the establishment of an independent Catalan Republic, hoping to be part of an “Iberian Confederation”. They were soon pressed by the new republican leadership in Madrid and agreed to settle for an autonomous Catalonia within Spain.

After the election victory of the right-wing and fascists and the formation of a republican government led by CEDA, the Catalan local government declared, on October 6, 1934, a “Catalan State within the Spanish Federal Republic”. It was meant to be part of a leftist resistance movement against the rising danger of fascism, which was threatening the whole European continent. Soon the Spanish army crashed the independent state, suspended local autonomy and arrested many activists including president Lluís Companys and all his government.

All this was just prelude to Catalonia’s special experiment during the 1936-39 civil war between the Spanish Republic and General Franco’s fascists. There are many books and films about this extraordinary social experiment aimed not only to defend the democratic republic but also to create a better society, led by workers and peasants in a real democratic and egalitarian spirit. In fact, my early love for Catalonia started with reading Orwell’s book “Homage to Catalonia”.

Later, of course, followed the bleeding experience of almost forty years of oppression by the Franco dictatorship. Mr. Companys, who was Catalonia’s president during the civil war, was among many who were executed in revenge for their struggle for freedom and justice. The Catalan language was outlawed and tens of thousands were imprisoned or had to go into exile.

There is a direct line connecting the experiences of the 20^th century and current events in Catalonia. Most people that are active today have living memories of parents, grandparents, relatives and friends who were killed, tortured, imprisoned or had to go into exile during the civil war or Franco’s dictatorship. The party of Macià and Companys, the “Republican Left of Catalonia” (ERC), is still leading the movement for independence and in the 2015 elections, as part of the “Together for Yes” coalition (JxSí), returned to be the biggest party in the Catalan parliament with 62 out of 135 representatives. And Spain is still a monarchy with institutions that have never completely broken with the tradition of Franco’s dictatorship. The “People’s Party” (PP) of Prime Minister Rajoy was actually established by a previous interior minister under the Franco dictatorship to assure this continuity.

Sympathy and ambivalence about separatism

Some young comrades here see this reference to Catalonia’s idealistic and rebellious past as pure nostalgia. They say that now Catalonia is simply richer than most of Spain, and wouldn’t like to share its affluence. Comparing the current complaints of the Catalan with those of the Kurds (or the Palestinians), outside observers may say “they have nothing to complain about”.

It reminds me of the response of some poor people, which are used to the view of women being abused, beaten and prevented from going out of the house, to hearing of a middle-class woman that asks for a divorce just because there is no love in her marriage. “Let her be beaten and shut up”, they might say. But don’t we all believe that unity, in state or marriage, should be the result of free will?

“You say that Spain is not a democracy?”

Well, now, with the clumsy attempts by the Spanish state to oppress the referendum, and the views of police beating citizens furiously just for their will to cast their vote, Catalonia can show the blooded noise and bloated eye that turn public opinion in its favor. Wasn’t all the argument about staying in Spain based on the assumption that Spain is now a democracy? What is more democratic than letting people express their opinion? Britain allowed the Scots to vote on independence. British politicians campaigned to convince them to vote “No”, and won in a democratic way.

All the idea of “the right of nations for self-determination” is not about the argument whether staying in one state is better or worse than separation. It states the obvious fact that keeping a nation within a state contrary to its will is basically wrong, both morally and practically. Even if initially there were no compulsory reasons for separation, the oppression and enmity that are the inevitable results of trying to forcefully suppress separatism are making life miserable for the oppressed, and awkward in many ways for the oppressors, and undo any possible benefit of unity. This was recognized by the greatest leader of Arab nationalism, Egypt’s president Gamal Abdel Nasser, who let Sudan separate peacefully.

I learned from my Catalan guest that the same effect worked also within Catalonia itself. Initially many more people supported the referendum than supported total independence. They were saying: “We may agree to be part of Spain, but this should be decided by our free will”. And after the brutal assault on the referendum, Catalan people who supported unity with Spain joined the protesters for the first time, some of them waving Spanish flags.

I find it especially wired while some leftists consider the corrupt rightist ultra-centralist government in Madrid as God’s invisible hand that was sent to redistribute Catalonia’s excessive wealth to Spain’s poor regions. It is doing much better job at holding Barcelona back than at helping anybody else.

The long road to the current referendum

There is also a more recent historical experience that led to the current surge in support for Catalan independence. It goes back to the previous decade, when the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) was in government in Madrid, under Prime Minister José Zapatero. At the same time the socialists were also in government in autonomous Catalonia, and there was a long process of negotiations to redefine the place of Catalonia within Spain, to satisfy the demand for greater autonomy. After compromises on both sides, the agreement was approved in 2006 by both Parliaments, in Barcelona and Madrid, and in a special referendum in Catalonia.

The Spanish rightist party, PP, then in opposition, objected to the 2006 agreement and appealed against it to the constitutional court. In 2010 the court decided by 6 to 4 judges to rewrite and re-interpret the status of Catalonia, annulling most of the achievements of the Catalan people in terms of language, legal rights and economic autonomy. This intervention by the court, based on laws that are mostly relics of the fascist era, which overthrew all what was agreed upon in long negotiations and approved by a democratic process, convinced many Catalans that they can’t rely on Spain’s democracy to meet their aspirations.

The immediate response to the annulment of the autonomy status by the court was the first mass pro-independence rally, which was estimated to number more than a million people. The main slogan of the protest was “We are a nation. We decide.” Since then mass independence demos continued in Catalonia every year.

Opponents of Catalonia’s independence emphasis polls in which respondents were given three options: Full independence, wider autonomy or preserving the status quo. Those clearly stating their preference for independence usually fall short of outright majority. But the option for greater autonomy was unilaterally blocked by Madrid, so it is hardly a viable alternative. And, put together, there is a clear majority that is unsatisfied with the status quo.

Also, many of those that avoid calling for separation from Spain do it out of fear from outright repression and economic sanctions that may follow. The nightmares of the civil war and the dictatorship are still a strong force in Spain as a whole. Of course, these are legitimate considerations that should be taken into account while choosing your path. But it means that not all those that prefer to stay in Spain do it because this is what they really want.

Popular movement

What the Spanish government doesn’t understand, explains my guest, is the deep popular nature of the quest for independence. They negotiate with political leaders, hoping to convince them to abandon the call for independence. But now, as so many

One ballot box saved

people are active and emotionally involved and the ideas are so widely spread, this is not an option. If some leaders will give up, they will immediately lose their popular support.

He describes the political map in Catalonia. The support for independence is strong both among local establishment (pro-capitalist) parties and among the different leftists, socialist and anarchists. Parties that didn’t join the movement, like the local socialist party, were split and abandoned by many of their grassroots activists as well as intellectual highlights. Podemos, the new alternative left on the Spanish level, is supporting independence in Catalonia and gained farter credibility by defending Catalans’ right to choose their way in the Parliament in Madrid.

The day of Truth

The popular character of the movement was strengthened and highlighted toward the referendum, as the challenge of oppression by Madrid became more threatening. My guest tells the story of thousands of ballot boxes that were bought in China, flown to France and smuggled through the borders by thousands of ordinary Catalan citizens, many of them farmers, hiding them under beds and in cowsheds. In spite of the efforts of the Spanish regular police and aggressive “civil guards”, which were sent in in great numbers by Madrid, almost none were caught.

2017-10-02-catalonia-police-taking_ballot

Hooded police confiscating ballot boxes – can they confiscate the will of the people?

He also tells the story of the defiance of more than five hundred local mayors, the great majority of them, who openly defied the orders of the central government and supported the referendum. Will they all be arrested?

His two sons, he tells, woke up at 04:00 on the morning of Sunday, October 1, their day off work, in order to be, with many others, at the gates of the polling center before 5 am, four hours before voting started, to prevent any attempt by the police to disrupt the voting. He also didn’t only vote “Yes!” but stayed the whole day to guard his vote lest it will be stolen by a police raid. They were all tuned to hear the news from friends’ phones of brutal police attacks on nearby polling centers. Fortunately the police had a hard time where they did attack and couldn’t disrupt the voting in most centers.

The rest of it is the history that everybody knows; the 90% yes vote for independence and the denial by Madrid that there was a referendum at all. And, of course, King Philip the sixth expressed his disappointment with the disloyalty of his subjects in Catalonia. He should really consider choosing another nation to rule over.

The vision

I ask my guest how the Catalans view their future independent state. He explains that it is not a return to old style nationalism. Actually, most Catalans feel very much part of Europe. They speak from the beginning on limited sovereignty within the European Union, with common market, free movement of people and no visible borders. But if they anyway belong to the European club, why do it through the mediation of Madrid and not directly through Barcelona?

Agricultural Anarchist Collective – Catalonia 1936

But not all Catalans are to this level mainstream Europeans. There is a strong anarchist tendency, which enjoys the support of more than 10% of the electorate. And there is the radical left that is critical of Europe’s conservative economic policies. My guest is concerned with the radicalism of these parties, but he can’t deny that they are integral part of Catalan political history and culture. In the framework of Free Catalonia Podemos might well be the next government party.

He stress that Catalan nationalism is not xenophobic. Because of Catalonia’s economic prosperity it drew economic migrants from all over Spain and from other countries. He says the independence movement take care to put in the front not only people from Catalan origins but also immigrants from different races and regions of the world.

Catalonia’s people have all different views about the future. Now they are (or most of them) united in a struggle for independence. When this struggle will be won they will have the chance to pursue their dreams, free of outside chains and interventions.

To some extent this vision may be viewed as converging toward a modern concept of trans-national unity, with no physical borders, combined with decentralized democracy and multiculturalism, which distribute as many powers as possible to all local levels, where the people are. The Kurdish left, confronted with the much more complicated quagmire of the Middle East, developed it into a comprehensive concept of Democratic Confederalism.

Reality check

I ask my Catalan guest about the danger of violent oppression. What will really come next after a declaration of independence?

The immediate expected response is more oppression from Madrid. But the worst he can think about is hundreds of political prisoners, mostly the imprisonment of the political leadership. He doesn’t think that in democratic Spain that wants to stay as part of democratic Europe there could be massacres or uncontrolled violence.

I hope he is right, but Madrid’s refusal to negotiate before the referendum will be “annulled” and threats to abolish Catalonia’s limited autonomy and force direct rule don’t bode well. As the people of Catalonia are mobilized in the struggle and the government only opts for more repression there are unlimited options for friction and confrontation to escalate and get out of control.

The Catalan leadership is striving for negotiations. Their main hope is that the European Union will intervene to find an agreed solution. But they are ready for any other kind of mediation, including Pope Francis who already intervened to solve sharp internal conflicts in other countries.

We like to think that the world is moving forward toward a more democratic order, where conflicts are solved by arguments and votes, not by guns and violence. The two referendums in Kurdistan and Catalonia pose an intriguing test to this assumption.

The Kurds know that they live and the most dangerous and politically oppressive region of the world, where hereditary kings and dictators rule by the power of the sword, and nationalism and sectarianism mix to create a combustive atmosphere. They don’t dare to declare independence as the armies of all neighboring states are ready to intervene to crush their dreams,

The Catalan referendum poses the question of how different Europe has become, has it really left behind its not so far violent past? It will test Europe’s pretension to represent a more democratic order that others may take inspiration from. If the holy unity of the state will prove stronger than the will of the people, than democracy is only a thin mask over the ugly face of dictatorship.

World Economy with Chinese Characteristics

17 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by freehaifa in China's Rise, Socialism

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Capacity Cuts, Central Planning, China's economic model, Cyclic Economic Crisis, Steel Overcapacity, The Economist

I started following China’s Rise in detail from the nineties, as the West was celebrating the victory of the capitalist system after the collapse of the Socialist Block around the Soviet Union. The rented ideologues of capitalism, including most of the world media and academy, wanted us to believe that Communism is dead because it was a wrong idea (not to say evil) from the beginning. But could it be that the failure was not due to the principles of the proposed communist system but to their distorted implementation in Russia, led by brutal self-serving bureaucratic elite that found in Stalinism a new version of its former Tsarist central rule and world power-struggle?

If one prototype was flawed and failed, could another team build a better implementation?

The Riddle of the Chinese Miracle

The phenomenal development of China from one of the poorest nations on earth to the world’s leading economic power is the central feature of the world scene over the last decades. But how should it be explained? Is it because new Chinese capitalism is even more exploitative and ruthless, as many critics from both left and right want us to think? Or is there something different, maybe they are doing something right? Could it be that the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party learned how to initiate and control economic development in a more scientific way, synchronizing social economy, market forces and some capitalist initiatives, inducing them all to drive its grand plan, instead of unleashing the destructive rule of Greed?

One special characteristic of the Capitalist system are cyclical booms and busts. As capital is in constant movement in search of wider profit margins, investment is flowing into the most profitable sectors. This creates over-capacity, which causes a fall in prices and profits, which in turn causes withdrawal of investment, destruction of productive forces, layout of workers and so on. Finally the reduced production can’t meet the demand in the market, prices, profits, production and employment surge again, toward the inevitable next bust.

Somehow China’s economic development over the last decades succeeded to avoid these cyclical crises that continue to haunt the capitalist system like seasonal storms. The financial crisis of 2007-2008 was not a typical cyclical crisis, but it provided a good example how China played differently to avoid it. The reason for the crisis was the reckless behavior of Western bankers, taking ever greater risks to maximize profits while relying on the state to come to their rescue when their gambles fail. Western governments poured money to the broken bankers while many poor people where kicked out of their homes to restore some of the banks’ bad debts.

In China’s export oriented economy millions of workers faced the sack as Western consumers had to cut spendings. China’s government mitigated the situation by handing-out money to poor families to buy electric appliances to keep its factories going, avoiding the worst of the crisis.

China Going Global

One of the numbers that I was following closely, like many other observers, was China’s GDP, as computed by Purchasing Power Parity, or PPP. According to the CIA’s “World Facts Book” China’s real GDP passed that of the US in 2014. But it was not a “photo-

World top 10 economies by GDP/PPP

finish”. Economic development goes on and according to the same source in 2016 China’s GDP was worth 21.14 trillion US$, or 14% more than the US’s 18.56 trillion and counting (see pictured table). The fact that Western economists continue to speak routinely about China as “the world’s second biggest economy” only shows that they are now in a deep state of denial.

But GDP numbers say little about the real dynamism of an economy. Maybe the single number that is most telling about a country’s success in the world economy is the value of its exports. Here China is a clear number one, with export worth 2.1 trillion US$ to the US’s 1.5. So here China is already 40% ahead of the US, and the export numbers are not corrected for distorted exchange rates.

Actually, used to support the under-dogs of the world all my life, I started feeling uneasy to be a China-fun lately. While in the nineties China’s pride was in lifting people from utmost poverty, is it not now a world bully that should be feared and contained?

The riddle of China’s internal development became a main riddle on today’s world economic and political scene. Is China just another power looking for its self-interest at the expense of others, or is it proposing to the world a different and more advanced system of cooperation?

The Crisis that Wasn’t

The British pro-capitalist crusaders in “The Economist” are one of my favorite sources for following economic analysis about China and its role in the world economy. They had a very interesting story to tell on their September 9, 2017, issue.

In an editorial named “Making sense of capacity cuts in China” they say that the main reason behind today’s relatively buoyant world economy is a drive by the Chinese government to cut capacity and production in central industries like Steel, Coal and Aluminum. According to their analysis overcapacity in these sectors led to falling prices and profits, which actually threatened a world economic crisis in 2016. Instead the Chinese government’s central planners intervened by a studied policy, setting targets for cutting capacity to restore prices, profits and healthy growth,

According to a detailed news item in the same issue, named “Capacity cuts in China fuel a commodity rally and a debate”, China’s planners simply ordered all coal mines to operate no more than 276 days throughout 2016, in a move that is apparently designed to keep most workers at work. In another detail that shows how massive China’s capacity cuts were, they mention that the planned cuts in Steel capacity equal 15 times Britain’s Steel production.

Source: The Economist

As China’s share of world production in these major industries is about 50%, its unilateral actions were enough to get the wanted effect and restart a new period of healthy economic expansion without the suffering of an unplanned crisis. And China was not so altruistic as to cause its own economy damage for the benefit of the world economy. As The Economist reports, its managed capacity cuts enabled it in an orderly way to close the less productive facilities, changing its industrial mix be more technologically advanced, such increasing its world economic leadership even farther.

The story of the world economic crisis that was avoided in 2016 may illustrate one of the most significant changes in the world economic system – a big step toward a world economy with Chinese Characteristics.

12 reasons for optimism about 2017 and beyond

31 Saturday Dec 2016

Posted by freehaifa in One World, Socialism

≈ 1 Comment

There are many reasons to be pessimist today. Everybody is talking about it. There is a world economic crisis for already 10 years and it is not going anywhere. The rich continue to buy influence, corrupt politics, set the rules, exploit and rob working people and the poor. It seems that the poor working people, instead of uniting to fight for their rights, are turning against each other, as we see from the rise of the Populist Right demagogy against minorities and immigrants in the West and from sectarian civil wars in the Middle East. And when people are fighting for their rights they are confronted with bloody oppression and nobody will come to their rescue, as the people of Halab (Aleppo) have just learned.

But for me Optimism is not a mood but a systematic studied approach. If we want to make the world better, we must concentrate on those processes that show the Human potential for improvement. And when you start looking for reasons to be optimist you can find plenty. Here are some to cheer you up as you go to celebrate a new 2017.

Health

My grandma told me that she didn’t know anyone from her family that lived more than 60 years. So she naturally expected to die as she became 60. She was surprised when it didn’t happen. Finally she lived to 93, most of it a healthy life.

Today we see a great tragedy in every family that lost a child. It was not a long time ago when most families suffered the death of babies and children. Actually, historically what kept the balance of the human population was the natural death of most children. When early death stopped to be natural, the world’s human population inflated. Only now we are approaching a new balance based on the conscious choice to have fewer children.

Similarly the main problem that was daunting humanity till recently was the search for food. My mom used to tell me: We are farmers, so we will never go hungry. As a child I was advised: Eat bread with every meal to fill your stomach. Now if anybody goes hungry it is not because the lack of food but because the failure of the distribution system or the greed of merchants and speculators. The problem of excess eating is now becoming a major health hazard around the world – until we will find a new balance in a world with plenty of food.

Bringing decent healthcare to everybody around the world is not a dream – it is something that is technologically possible and economically affordable.

Education and Knowledge

It is not so long ago that even the most basic education was the privilege of the few. The spread of general basic education is an ongoing revolution around the world. Now we witness a second wave of the education revolution where high education is becoming available to ever more people.

But formal education is only a technical detail. The real issue is the availability of knowledge and the ability to use it. Today as we chat at the family reunion my kids check online for historical and scientific facts. As we stroll in the forest we take a picture of a flower and can reach its botanical file… And the knowledge revolution is only at its beginnings.

I’m not sure at all whether Trump is more disgraceful or ignorant than previous US presidents. But what is sure is that now the news about his every fallacy is more ubiquitous and spreading faster than ever before. The same go for the facts (and some false news) about the corruption and servitude to big business of his nominees as those of Hillary Clinton. Part of our disgust at current politics is a result of being more enlightened. It should be a force for good in the longer run.

Speaking Up

The reading revolution is centuries old, but just recently less than 1% of us ever wrote anything that other people would read. Actually it was Facebook (launched on 2004) that gave everyone a wall to write on.

I still remember the times when an intelligent person would read one and the same paper every day. When speaking with a person you would typically find that he holds the views of the paper that he reads, and knows the set of facts that the paper supplies to support these views.

Now that everybody have a voice we see all kinds of nonsense, insults and prejudice coming out – but they were there in peoples’ minds much before. The fact that people speak up their mind and the lively discussion that ensues will make people think better, as now what they think makes a difference and they get much more feedback.

It is a new process that can hardly be evaluated. Just think about the development of a child, how much time and experience is required between she starts speaking and until she can express herself clearly or present a case about complicated issues. Now remember that it is only a few years since hundreds of millions of people started to speak up and try to figure out how to make sense out of the ensuing noise.

Democracy

After a period of enthusiasm about the rise of social movements and leftist governments in Latin America, we see a backlash with the election victories of conservatives and rightists and some suspicious power-grabs. Yet, comparing with previous rightists onslaughts just a few decades ago, this time governments are changing mostly peacefully and it is just possible that leftist governments will come back peacefully in some next elections. The same trend of changing governments peacefully is taking root also in much of Africa and other parts of the world.

The benefit of changing governments by elections is not only the avoidance of violence and destructive wars. After repression everywhere, and after a leftist wave almost everywhere in Latin America, now those government that succeeded more in fulfilling their promises, like Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador, may keep their leftist regimes. The left in other countries will have to reorganize to regain public trust and work harder to give their voters what they really want.

Democracy is not only about changing governments by elections. Actually we are still looking for the real thing: How to enable people take control of their destiny. Bottom-up democracy is the more promising model, as people may be involved on a daily basis with the essentials of their lives as they see and understand them, and improve with experience.

In many places around the world, people are experimenting with new types of popular involvement and control. Some of the most amazing experiments of self-rule come amid the harshest conditions. In Greece, as the traditional economy stopped functioning, people were building democratic cooperatives. In Syria people experiment with popular democracy in Kurdish Rojava as well as in some liberated cities and villages in other parts of the country.

Travel and Immigration

Just where progress faces the harshest resistance – we may be making a real breakthrough. The technological progress that drives travel and communication is a one-way process that interconnects our world and transforms it into one global village. The national state is an anachronism that runs counter to the direction of the economy, our culture and the spirit of the time. Whoever will try to resist it will do it at his own peril.

We can celebrate as more people travel around the world, choose their place to live by what is better for them and not by where they were born, and mix together into one beautiful human race.

Gender equality and Personal Freedom

Some of the greatest achievements of the last decades were the progress in women’s rights. We also experienced some breakthroughs with the social recognition of different sexual choices and gender identities. Of course, there are battles ahead before we would be able to declare full victory over misogyny, patriarchy, homophobia and bigotry.

Every achievement on this road is a relief and blessing to all humanity as there is less social oppression, violence, prejudice and hatred. It expands the limits of what one can do and what you can be. With every obstacle that is removed, there will be more options to explore new ways of life and social interaction.

Technology

Solar power generation in California

Unlike political and social development, which goes through conflict, ups and downs and upheavals, technological progress is mostly a one way process. Many of our problems can simply be solved by the right technical solutions. Energy can be produced from renewable sources like sun and wind without much pollution. Food can be produced using much smaller land and without harming animals. Water can be desalinated. Self-driving cars can prevent most road accidents. Biotechnology may prevent or cure most diseases.

The knowledge that all these technologies are here ready to serve us should make us wake up and remove the current obstacles that stand in their way.

Less Work More Life

One danger that scares many people is the disappearance of jobs. As most people’s work life is only slightly better than slavery, we would expect people to celebrate the falling of their chains. Really, it should be the best of news that all humanity’s needs may be supplied with a fraction of the work that was required previously. This is the inevitable result of technological progress.

Looking at the current economy, much work that is done is actually a burden and not a benefit for society. Armies around the world are getting huge budgets that are more likely to cause war than to protect the people. The police, courts and prisons are doing more to perpetuate crime than to prevent it. A single political decision to legalize drugs may abolish at once most of the criminality around the world. Bureaucracy is a burden over the real economy and constant stress over ordinary peoples’ lives. Much of the white collar tasks can be replaced by computers just as blue-collar tasks were replaced by machines.

The economists that portray the current capitalist order as the law of nature say that people are becoming redundant and are destined to poverty because they are no more required for the economy. It is a simple question of political power: who serves whom. If the economy is ours to serve people, it is our time to take control of it.

The recent experiments, in several places around the world, giving basic wages to all people without connection to work, is an overdue first step to break the yoke of wage slavery.

China and Vietnam

International bodies agreed about the millennium goals of reducing poverty and

Vietnam and China outstanding for their peoples’ optimism

improving human conditions in essential fields like health and education. The greatest contributions toward fulfilling these goals are due to two countries: China and Vietnam. Over the last half century they demonstrated an unprecedented spell of economic development, starting from the harshest levels of poverty and mostly working against hostile obstacles from the dominant world powers.

China started by leading the world in the production of most goods. Cheap Chinese products improved the standard of living of consumers all over the world.

Now China also leads the efforts to develop clean energy, stop climate change, bring high quality education to wide masses, develop fast trains and electric cars and much more. Within 15 years China built new modern cities (no slums there) for 300 million people that had to leave under-productive village life and became part of the modern economy – building the equivalent of a whole new USA or Western Europe all at once.

Just 15 years ago most third world countries were subject to different kinds of sanctions by Western powers that were supposed to “educate” them but actually served to subdue their economies to the interest of imperialist multinational companies. Now China builds a new world economic order, based on unconditional cooperation and mutual development.

It is mostly due to China’s role that the balance of world economic power started to change, over the last 15 years, to the benefit of the third world.

The rebellious human spirit

In the development of Human society there are always measures and counter measures. There are long term consistent trends like technological progress, the spread of knowledge and the interconnection of the world. But politics are working in many different ways, many times producing the reverse of what their initiators wanted. One force that is constantly working is the rebellious human spirit inspiring billions of people to try new ways to improve their lives…

The two world wars, the biggest clashes between imperialist powers in their quest to control the world, brought immense misery. But they ended with two big waves of decolonization and the formation of alternative socialist regimes. Today, as the Western powers are becoming hostile to immigrants, more people from the 3^rd world will try to build their future in their (or other 3^rd world) countries – and the decline of the western powers will accelerate. Iran, which tried to force strict religious behavior over its people, is now probably the Middle Eastern country with the most free-wheeling population.

Fast Changes

They say: “If it is not broken, don’t fix it”. But now it clearly is!

As fragile human beings we look for security and are afraid of change. Those who are most disadvantaged by the current order are the most vulnerable to any disturbances. But they also have the most to gain from fundamental change. And the majority of humanity is disadvantaged by the current world order. Palestinians in particular are denied basic Human Rights or any decent place in the current order and their plight is not going to change until there will be major changes to the rules of the game, at least in our region.

Change may come faster in our age than ever before. Almost a hundred years ago Britain occupied Iraq and faced stiff popular resistance – the Iraqi Revolt (1920). With air bombardment and the systematic burning of villages they succeeded to consolidate their rule over a nation that was mostly composed of illiterate peasants. The US occupation of Iraq in 2003 had even bigger military advantage, but the cultural gap almost disappeared. It ended up with the US spending a devastating one trillion dollar on the military adventure, with no political gains to show for its money.

The Arab spring is a social and political movement on the scale of the democratization of Europe that started with the French revolution in 1789, or the fall of the Soviet Union and its East European block in 1989-1991. But it is the first great revolutionary wave that uses social networks and new media. Till now it proved, at least, that no amount of force and no level of cruelty can assure the forces of the old order the suppression of the will of the people.

Respect All Lives

I was raised as a vegetarian, a relic of my grandma’s Tolstoyan tradition. I still remember the times when most ordinary people didn’t eat meat on a regular basis, simply because they couldn’t afford to buy it. I remember old people in the neighborhood saying how lucky they are – they eat meat on every holiday… (It was a cynical refrain to Islam having only two holidays a year). Later it became harder to be a vegetarian as people started to eat meat every day. Friends from the new generation would wonder: what do you eat at all if you don’t eat meat?

But now people everywhere are starting to reassess their behavior out of conscious and not out of necessity. When we invited our friends to a vegetarian wedding party, we heard everywhere stories about people trying to be vegetarian or thinking about it.

I must admit that when we decided, just a year ago, to make another step toward healthier and more moral life as vegans, one consideration was that it is easy to do it these days. Now, even in the most commercial supermarkets, there is a lot of choice of vegan alternatives for people that don’t want to give up spoiled tastes.

Technological progress and consciousness help us all make the moral choice and respect all lives.

The Latin Red Wave: a Circle or a Spiral?

28 Monday Mar 2016

Posted by freehaifa in One World, Socialism, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Daniel Gaido, Ebb, Evo Morales, Latin America, Macri, Nationalizations, Participating Democracy, Pink Wave, Socialist Perspective, Trotskyist View

Of all the Leftist leaders that came to power in Latin America in the last “Red Wave”, the one I love most is Evo Morales, the indigena president of Bolivia.

Evo Morales

But, to say the truth, when the news came that voters in Bolivia rejected (in the February 21, 2016, referendum) the proposal to remove restrictions on presidential terms – thus preventing Morales from reelection for a 4^th term in 2019 – I was satisfied with the result.

It shouldn’t signal the end of the rule of the MAS – Bolivia’s “Movement for Socialism”. It gives Morales plenty of time to prepare for an orderly transfer of power to a new generation that will continue his struggle. But if during 13 years in government he will fail to build a leadership that will be able to carry on without him being at the top post – Bolivian socialism may require a period in opposition to reorganize.

Red Wave of Hope

When the poor people of Venezuela elected Hugo Chavez as president, in December 6, 1998, we still lived in “the end of history” after the collapse of the “Socialist Block” led by the Soviet Union. The power of imperialism, led by the North American US, seemed too strong to challenge.

Soon challenges mounted from many sides. Al-Qaeda’s September 11 (2001) terrorist attacks in the heart of the US centers of power drew the imperialist super-power into two ill-conceived bloody and costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. China built itself into the main engine of the world economy while internal corruption hit hard at the heart of the capitalist economy, resulting in a global economic crisis.

Latin America’s people used the diminished power of imperialism and its distraction by other fronts to challenge the imperialist domination by electing a series of leftist governments: Lula Da Silva in Brazil and Nestor Kirchner in Argentina in 2003, Morales in Bolivia in 2006, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Rafael Correa in Ecuador in 2007 and Jose Mujica in Uruguay in 2010, to name some.

President Jose Mujica at farm home – he was shot six times and spent 14 years in jail for opposing the dictatorship

The comprehensive nature of this wave is a result of the previous period of right-wing dictatorships and repressive regimes, symbolized by Pinochet’s bloody coup in Chile (1973) and the dictatorship and dirty war in Argentine (1974-1983). In other countries repression was even bloodier, like the rule of the death-squads’ government in Colombia and the genocide by the Guatemalan government against its native population. It was a US-coordinated war against the people, which crashed the hopes of a whole generation across the continent. Many of the youth that fought bravely against these oppressive regimes, and were regarded terrorists by the regimes and their imperialist backers, later became the leaders of the Red Wave that carried some of them to the center of state power.

It was not clear that the US and local capitalist-military elites will allow such a change to take place. As late as 2002 the US still tried to repeat its old tricks by initiating a coup against Chavez in Venezuela. At the same time there was talk in imperialist circles of restoring military power in restive Argentina. Only after the masses in Caracas took control of the streets and repelled the coup, and after the US got embroiled in Iraq, that the door opened widely for some fresh political air.

Achievements and Limitations

The new left-leaning (to various degrees) governments brought significant achievements to the masses that brought them to power.

The capitalist media likes to say that the main factor behind the economic development and the reduction in poverty over the last 15 years are mostly due to luck: The rise in the price of commodities as a result of China’s economic miracle. This is just another lie that tries to hide the importance of political power in deciding the distribution of wealth, internationally and locally.

The Argentinian government refused to pay in full its external debt, much of it was money given by world capitalism to bankroll the murderous dictatorship. It invested in local development instead of squeezing the people to pay for endless usurpation.

Chavez taking control of Venezuela’s oil production

Only in 2003, after 4 years in government, a failed coup and a long strike by the company, Chavez succeeded to take control of PDVSA – Venezuela’s oil producing state-owned company – and to use the country’s vast resources for improving the life of the impoverished masses.

All around the region, to different levels, governments reversed privatizations and invested in social programs: education, health, social housing and relief from poverty. They reduced the dependency of their economies on the US and the IMF and looked for other opportunities, first and foremost by strengthening ties with China. By and large, Latin America succeeded to avoid the economic crisis that erupted in the imperialist centers in 2007-8.

All those were significant achievements that were hard to imagine before. We have witnessed dozens of countries around the world were economic bonanza from natural resource or commodities led to surge in corruption, repression, social marginalization and even civil war.

But the “Red Wave” was not a full revolution. Coming to power in democratic elections, the new regimes, even while writing new constitutions, kept the structure of the capitalist states. No one even tried to implement “the dictatorship of the proletariat”. The experiments with “participatory democracy” and “people’s power” remained limited and in no place outweighed the state apparatus.

On the economic level what was implemented is “mixed economy” with strengthening of the state’s sector but still leaving much space for the private sector. This could be expected, as the socialist states that survived the collapse of the Soviet Union also adopted different models of mixed economy. But in China political control remains in the hands of the communist party, after the capitalist class was annihilated (with much else) by the Cultural Revolution. In Latin America the Oligarchas have never lost their taste for state power.

The Ebb of the Red Wave

For some time the red wave seemed irreversible – but this was a mood, not a learned historical assessment.

Now the inevitable economic cycle, a basic feature of the capitalist economy, brings a delayed recession to many countries in Latin America. As everywhere, economic recession tends to expose the weaknesses of the economy, the society and the government. In the adversarial politics of representative democracy people in stress turn to the opposition not for what it stands for but to punish their failed governments.

Peronism failed intself…

The capitalist media celebrated the election of right-wing Macri as president of Argentine (November 2015) and the victory of the opposition in the parliamentary elections in Venezuela (December 2015) as the end of the Red Wave. The real picture is much more complicated.

After years in government the masses are entitled to judge their leftist rulers for their achievements and not for their rhetoric. The real meaning of leftist policy is loyalty to the workers and other poor masses and for their interests. The assurance of the interests of the poor masses can only come through the organization of these masses and their active participation in politics.

No left party or government is immune to corruption. It may even be that the corruption on the left is more destructive and more irritating, as the right is well known to serve the rich anyway. And incompetence may be in some cases as damaging as bad intentions. Forming a government to effectively serve the masses is the final real test to the sincerity, wisdom and creative abilities of those left parties that succeeded to reach this stage.

Of course, there are severe external pressures. The US and other imperialist powers are not innocent spectators. They will still do whatever they can to fail any attempt to create a more equal distribution of power and global resources. And don’t expect the local exploiters to play fair. They will use their money (as long as they have it) to buy and bribe their way to power as they ever did. But when you are in government you are best placed to mobilize the masses with the state apparatus to counter those pressures – if this is your vision and you are up to the task.

Climbing the Spiral

The task of the left forces in Latin America is not to preserve their power in its current shape but to find new ways to empower their people. Periods in opposition shouldn’t be regarded as a disaster. We may hope that the trauma of dictatorships and civil wars will not return to Latin America (in many other parts of the world it is still a painful reality). The main task, in opposition like in government, is to build a movement that is really connected and committed to the masses, open the way for them to express themselves and control political decisions, and find practical solutions to promote their aspirations.

The new surge of the Red Wave in Latin America, with or without some right wing government in-between, depends on the left’s ability to evolve, passing the leadership to a new generation (sometimes under the leadership of different parties), developing the model for participatory democracy that will ensure real control of the people over the state apparatus and implementing a modern socialist economy that will serve the people as a whole.

Haifa, March 2016

Discussion

As I’m not an expert on Latin American affairs, I sent this article to some friends for comments.

Below is one response that I’ve already received…

A Trotskyist View from Argentina

By: Daniel Gaido

I’m afraid I disagree with the analysis

There was never a Red Wave. Red is the symbol of communism, and the local bourgeoisie not only was not expropriated but did very well indeed under those allegedly red governments. To give you just one example: when Cristina Kirchner traveled to China, she was accompanied by Francesco “Franco” Macri, the father of Mauricio Macri, who in that single trip alone made 900 million dollars as commission for the signing of contracts with Chinese companies. This shows the completely bogus character of the opposition between peronism and macrism, as does the fact that the agreement with the holdouts has been made with the help of the peronist deputies and senators, who gave Macri (and imperialism) the quorum and the votes they needed.
The current “shift to the right” is the result of the bogus (bourgeois) character of the alleged left and of the crisis of world capitalism. Since those allegedly leftist governments saw their task as being “humane” administrators of capitalist exploitation (amidst huge corruption – see Brazil but also Lazaro Baez in Argentina) it is only natural that they should be brought down by a crisis of capitalism.
Not only social inequality continued to grow under the “red wave” governments (not a single shanty town has been eradicated, and indeed they have grown exponentially all over the region) but the colonial character of the Latin American economies has become much more marked under those allegedly nationalist governments. There has been a steep primarization of exports, which are virtually all primary products (commodities): soya beans, oil, cooper, etc.
“Forming a government to effectively serve the masses” implies expropriating the bourgeoisie and handing over the means of production to the state, as Lenin and Che Guevara did. All the rest is empty talk aimed at deceiving the masses.5. Where is the working class in your analysis? It is never the subject of history, capable of determining its own destiny. Apparently it can only choose between a “good” and a “bad” bourgeois government, but it is and will always remain cannon fodder for capitalist exploitation.
6. “a movement that is really connected and committed to the masses, open the way for them to express themselves and control political decisions, and find practical solutions to promote their aspirations.” All this is, to put it mildly, extremely vague. I’d rather stick to Marx’s idea of what is needed:

Against the collective power of the propertied classes the working class cannot act, as a class, except by constituting itself into a political party, distinct from, and opposed to, all old parties formed by the propertied classes.

This constitution of the working class into a political party is indispensable in order to insure the triumph of the social revolution and its ultimate end — the abolition of classes.

The combination of forces which the working class has already effected by its economical struggles ought at the same time to serve as a lever for its struggles against the political power of landlords and capitalists.

The lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economical monopolies and for enslaving labor. To conquer political power has therefore become the great duty of the working classes.

https://www.marxists.org/history/international/iwma/documents/1872/hague-conference/parties.htm

Democratic Confederalism and the Palestinian Experience

09 Saturday May 2015

Posted by freehaifa in Kurdistan, Socialism

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

Abdullah Ocalan, Bottom-Up democracy, Democratic Confederalism, Kurdish left, palestine, people’s power, Turkey

Reading Ocalan in Haifa, Palestine

A demonstrator holds a portrait of jailed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan during a gathering to celebrate Newroz in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir in this March 21, 2009 file photo. To match feature TURKEY-OCALAN/ REUTERS/Umit Bektas/Files (TURKEY POLITICS RELIGION SOCIETY)

While in most Arab countries the left is in a prolonged retreat, we see how the Kurdish left succeeded to establish itself as the dominant force between the Kurdish masses in most of Kurdistan, even as it is divided between different nation-states. This makes the study of the Kurdish experience and of the revolutionary theory that inspires it an essential effort for Palestinian and Arab activists looking for new agenda for liberation from Imperialism, Zionism and local tyrannies.

(This article was translated to German and published in “Kurdistan Report”)

Practical and Theoretical base for Democratic Confederalism

Abdullah Ocalan, in his book “Democratic Confederalism”, proposes this bottom-up organization of society based strongly on the Kurdish experience, but also on a wide and deep view of history. He mentions how old Feudal empires strived by allowing a wide range of diverse cultural societies to co-exist and relying on the organization of many aspects of society on the local level.

Out of the specific local conditions that helped the Kurdish society in North Kurdistan to adopt the model of local self-organization through local councils, as mentioned by Ocalan and other writers, we may remember the old social bonds in a mostly-rural population living in harsh conditions, inherent distrust of the ruling state institutes due to its oppressive attempt to mechanically enforce its nation-state concept and, of course, the leading role of the liberation movement in organizing the masses.

The concept of Bottom-Up democracy was adopted in different forms in many revolutionary movements. We may start with the Workers Councils – famous by their Russian name Soviets – that were born in Russia in the 1905 revolution and were developed by the Bolsheviks as the organizing principle of their system of government. These councils lost their real popular base after the first revolutionary period. One of the more known present day experiences of building democracy from its popular base is the “Participative Democracy” that Chavez tried to promote in Venezuela.

While it is not in the scope of this paper to compare the different paradigms of popular democracy, it is important to note that Ocalan, with the proposition of Democratic Confederalism, is suggesting a framework where people’s power may be separated from the state’s power. He even examines an option for long-term coexistence of this “dual rule”.

The concept of Democratic Confederalism is based on the organization of society on the local level to take care for its real needs. It stresses the central role of women liberation in the emancipation of society as a whole and the ecological approach for sustainable economic development. From the local assemblies it forms higher level assemblies for coordination for common goals, while the center of power stays in the lower level.

This is, to some extent, an adaptation of the concept of popular democracy to the special conditions of the Kurdish people. As any suggestion of forming a separate Kurdish state is encountered with utmost rejection and repression, the balance of power on the ground is changing in favor of the local society. This paradigm allows also for uniting the Kurdish people through the organs of Democratic Confederalism without directly challenging the “holy” state borders in the war-prone Middle East.

Similarities and differences of the situation in Palestine

The basics of the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab conflicts are very different from those of the Kurd’s struggle against their different oppressors. While the Kurds were subject to severe repressive measures, some of them, like the ban of the native language, were not matched by Zionism; Ocalan reminds us that there is a long history of good relations between the Kurdish communities and their various neighbors. Only the creation of the nation-states after the First World War created the basis for the current oppression of the Kurds.

In contrast, Zionism was implanted in Palestine as an external and hostile force, part of the European colonization of subjected countries all over the world. Today, after direct colonialist rule was overthrown all over the world by liberation movements, Israel is the only case of active colonialism still in its expansionist stage: Usurping land from the native population, denying them any civil or national rights, engaging in systematic Ethnic Cleansing both in the 1948 and the 1967 occupied areas. This makes for another basically different characteristic of the conflict: While Ocalan speaks of a nation-state trying to forcefully assimilate local communities, the utmost goal of Zionism remains to drive Palestinians out of their homeland.

The imminent threat of total annihilation of their society forced Palestinians to mobilize on a very high level. From the beginning of the Zionist colonization more than a hundred years ago, Palestinians engage both in mass struggle and in armed resistance. One of the highest points in this struggle was between the years 1936 and 1939, when a general strike of the Palestinian population, against the British occupation and Zionist colonization, continued for a full half-year, paralyzing many sectors of the economy. It was followed by three years of armed insurrection, when most of the rural areas were under control of the guerilla. This period of struggle exposed the different agendas between the popular movement that tried to organized the masses and care for their daily needs and the traditional leadership that tried to limit the struggle and tended to compromise with the British occupation.

The next massive explosion of revolutionary struggle by the Palestinians came after the 1967 defeat of the Arab armies by Israeli aggression. The Palestinians, most of them refugees after the 1948 Nakba, understood that Palestine will not be freed by state warfare and mobilized for revolutionary popular war, based mostly on the dwellers of the refugee camps. This revolutionary war put the Palestinians in conflict with the interests of the local Arab regimes. As a result the Palestinian guerilla was crashed by the Jordanian army in the Black September of 1970, oppressed again in Lebanon in 1976 by local fascists with the help of the Syrian army, and forced to leave Lebanon by the invading Israeli army in 1982.

Later the center of the struggle moved again inside Palestine, with the first (1987-1993) and the second (2000-2005) Intifadas.

In all this period the concentration of all efforts was on the main conflict, initially against the British occupation and the Zionist colonization and later all against Israel as the realization of the colonialist movement. The question of self-organization of the native population was viewed as secondary. This concentration on the struggle over state-power was driven by the constant belief that another military effort could bring about liberation, and that the internal need of the local society would then be handled by the emerging patriotic government.

In the long term, as military victory proved elusive, the weakness of self-organization of the local society is hindering its ability to stand in the face of constant pressure and erosion by the occupying force. On the other hand, even when Palestinians try to concentrate on organizing the local society, this is extremely hard to achieve under the conditions of military occupation, when their economy is both subjected and marginalized by the hegemonic Israeli capitalist economy and any political or trade unionist organization can be suppressed.

With a view to the future, democratic cross-border mass organization, as suggested by Ocalan for uniting the Kurdish people, may also be the best way to re-vitalize the Palestinian liberation movement, whose old institutions were converted to state-like structures without real sovereignty.

Speaking about the longer future of Palestine after the defeat of Zionism and the return of Palestinian refugees, we stand for a single democratic state in all of Palestine. We reject the notion of “bi-national state” that will entrench a dual-rule system that may perpetuate the relics of Zionism. Yet some form of communal democracy can be a practical way to accommodate for the ethnic and cultural diversity of the population.

Some Palestinian experiences with popular democracy

From the time of the 1936-39 strike and insurrection, Palestinians practiced self-organization and self-rule at the midst of an open conflict with murderous enemies. There were new experiences of organization and popular democracy in the refugee camps at the height of Palestinian armed revolution in Jordan and Lebanon. Palestinian in the refugee camps in Lebanon still enjoy some level of self-rule in spite of all the blows that they suffered there.

The first Intifada was basically organized by grass-root local organizations, and a great part of its agenda was to challenge all aspects of the daily rule of the occupation over people’s lives. For some time the occupation simply closed all schools and the popular committees of the intifada organized “popular study” programs.

I want to examine in more details the local experience in the 1948 occupied territories, which is less recognized internationally, where I have personal experience through participation in the struggle over the last 40 years.

Arab Palestinians in the 48 territories were what remained of an annihilate society after the 1948 Nakba, when all cities in the occupied areas and more than 500 villages were ethnically cleansed and destroyed. The counted less than 200,00 after the Nakba but by now count almost one and a half million.

In 1976, after a whole new generation emerged, they organized for the first time to confront a governmental plan of mass land confiscation. In many villages people organized local “land defense” committees. In March 30 1976, “The Land Day”, there was the first general strike since the Nakba. The police and the army attacked the villages and six of the local people were killed. Still “The Land Day” is remembered with pride in the history of the Palestinian people and is celebrated as a national day every year.

Since then the concept of “Popular Committees” as the main organ of mass struggle has become part of the local tradition in many Arab villages and neighborhoods. Typically the “popular committee” is composed of representative of all the political parties as well as of other local bodies and volunteers.

Another local tradition is the “protest tent” that is set up when the struggle in some locality requires constant mobilization. In many cases protest tents are opened on land that is in danger of confiscation or near houses that the authorities plan to destroy. Sometimes the protest tent is becoming the center of political and cultural lives for the population of the specific locality.

There were two experiences of local organization of a different kind oriented to the immediate needs of the population. In the fifties and the sixties of the previous century, just after the Nakba, the communist party was the only remaining active mass organization within the Palestinian Arab population in the 48 occupied territories. It had an important role in the restructuring of society after the trauma of the Nakba on political and cultural level. It also experimented with other shapes of organizations, like organizing collective shops and some productive collectives. In the last two decades “The Islamic Movement” is the most popular political party. One of its slogans is the “self-sustained society”, and it builds a network of charities and local services wherever it has strong influence. Yet both experiences are mostly partisan and didn’t try to organize the population in a democratic framework open for all.

In our local experience, the popular democratic organization is conceived and functioning as a tool in the struggle and rarely is used as an organ of self-government. There are many reasons for that, basically the destruction of the old rural economy, marginalization of the local Palestinian economy in the Israeli capitalist economy and local class contradictions. But there is also lack of serious thinking and experimentation with local organization that could build a stronger local society with more internal solidarity.

Democratic Confederalism and the Arab Spring

When Ocalan first proposed the concept of Democratic Confederalism it was in the context of strong nation-states. The new concept concentrated on defending and strengthening local societies. It allowed for local organization without necessarily challenging the state’s structure.

But, at the same time, Ocalan also analyzed the weaknesses of the whole regional political structure and its inadequacy to the needs of all local nations and communities. His wider vision was of democratic re-orientation for the region as a whole.

The failure of all local state structures could not be demonstrated in a more dramatic and tragic way than the latest developments in the Arab countries, in what started as “The Arab Spring” but is now characterized by a wave of counter-revolutionary oppression.

Since 2011, faced with a wave of mass struggle and the demands for democratic change, the local elites, entrenched at the center of state apparatuses, responded with a combination of state repression and incitement of sectarian and ethnic “Fitna” (a special Arabic word for dangerous civil strife). The erosion of the foundation of the society by these conflicts also created the conditions for the rise of religious extremism and groups that try to take control by terrorizing the population.

With its long tradition of self-organization and self-defense, it is no wonder that the Kurdish population was relatively better placed to confront these harsh new realities. This has much to do with the theory and practice of Democratic Confederalism.

Facing the conversion of the state apparatus into a naked oppressive machine, many sections of the population in the affected Arab countries now engage in heroic experiments of self-organization, self-rule and self-defense. In Libya and Yemen different local militias now hold more power than the state armies. Syria and Iraq are torn apart by civil war. In Egypt the all-powerful state apparatus wages an all-out war against local society, symbolized by imposing the death sentence on hundreds of demonstrations in a single trial and by the most in-human siege of the Palestinian Gaza strip.

The solution should come in the form of new democratic re-organization of society, in the shape of Democratic Confederalism or any similar framework. It should build on the courage and the ability to organize that the masses proved and developed through the years of strife. From necessity it should form a virtue. From confronting the cruelty of the regimes and extremism, it should form the new norms for solidarity and mutual respect between all components of the society, embracing all different cultures, religions and ethnicities.

Bomb 4 Peace & Work 2 Live

24 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by freehaifa in Crisis of Capitalism, Socialism

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Apple working conditions, BBC, Blog, bomb4peace, Social Gaps, Technological Revolution, The Economist, Unemployment, work hours

This post was initially published in the new Bomb4Peace blog…

Welcome Nur to the blogosphere…

You called your blog “bombing4peace”, so I may assume that you intend to expose some of the annoying and dangerous contradictions in our world order. I know you experienced and suffered a lot from the contradictions of our distorted society. I really hope you will have the time and passion to bring more of your experience and reflections into writing.

To be more specific, I wanted to celebrate your new-born blog by relating to your first post.

You named it “I don’t want to ‘work to live’ or ‘live to work’”… At first glance it may look like an expression of “laziness” of a spoiled youth that don’t want to be enlisted to the mass slave-labor (or wage-labor) market. In the post you go much beyond your personal choices and propose a new world economic order, based on universal division of the really necessary work (maybe 4 hours’ work, 4 days a week) in order that everybody in the world will be able to live in dignity and still have a lot of free time and control of their life choices.

* * *

The belief and knowledge that “Another World is Possible” is an important part of our self-defense mechanism against our enslavement to the system.

Fighting for a better world is not only a matter of choice, but it is a necessity. You pose the question “how much work is really necessary?” In our age things are changing fast, and the answer to this question is also changing…

On my first year working in the factory (as a computer programmer), more than 30 years ago, our work week was shortened by a quarter of an hour, at the initiative of the management (We were never allowed to organize!). I thought this was the most natural thing, and that with the progress of technology we will have to work less and less. But it never happened again.

The Capitalist system failed to translate better technology and higher productivity to lesser work burden. This is in part because the system itself is causing high friction, inflicting immense extra expenses on everybody through wars, arms-race, the legal system, mass imprisonment, advertising, pollution, bureaucracy, the financial system, rampant consumerism and much more.

But unnecessary work is not the only damage caused by the Capitalist system. While the original meaning of work, as you suggest in your post, is to produce the necessities for human living, Capitalism converted work, or waged-labor, into a commodity that is traded in the market…

Our work is not ours any more. We are not making the things that we need, but we sell our working power in order to get the money to buy our needs. Our magnificent ability to change the world, our creativity, doesn’t belong to us but we are obliged to sell it in order to live… This way our work is converted from the essence of our Human lives to an activity that is forced upon us, mostly in frustrating and humiliating circumstances, many times in direct service to our most despised enemies.

This system of alienated over-work may not be sustainable much longer, even as we put all our effort unwillingly at its service.

* * *

In a special report about the world economy, dated October 4, 2014, The Economist investigates the future of work under the third industrial revolution – the consequences of the information and communication technology. It provides a wide perspective of the change that is just taking place… It estimates that about 47% of current jobs in the US may be replaced by computers or automation over the next decade. It describes how the percentage of the population employed in manufacturing has already peaked in many 3^rd world countries before industrialization had the chance to pull them out of poverty.

In spite of all the amazing technological development over the last decade, productivity growth and economic development are slowing. The report goes on to describe the shrinking part that workers are getting from the hardly-expanding cake, while the rich elite are accumulating unprecedented wealth. Within the working population itself, the proportion of income of the top small minority is increasing while the fate of most workers is not improving or even getting worse. The types of available jobs is also changing, as middle-skill jobs with decent wages are most prone to be replaced by technology, and therefore, most workers are pressed to the lower skill low-paid jobs.

The prospect that the report is predicting for the majority of Humanity who live from their work is dire: “a generation of workers, the world over, is facing unemployment and stagnant pay”… By treating work as a commodity that workers must sell for their living, they conclude that there will not be work enough for everybody and the price of Human working-power (like any commodity whenever its supply exceeds demand) will continue tumbling.

* * *

We learn in High Tech that every problem is an opportunity.

Capitalism is a system that designates most of humanity to poverty, just because work (defined as the caring for peoples’ needs) can be done ever more efficiently. This system IS lunatic while yours proposals are pure logic.

Actually, what we are missing is political power to the people. As the Capitalists are controlling the state and the international system, they utilize them to their self interest – to make more money at the expense of the vast majority. More and more people today understand that only through political power this process may be stopped or even reversed. You can see it in the mass movement to raise the minimum wage.

If putting your effort in order to create better conditions for Human livelihood is the original meaning of work, than working for political change, working for a just social order, for Socialism, is the most necessary and productive work in our times.

You might even discover that writing your blog is also work… I hope it will not dissuade you from going on with this blessed effort.

* * *

To finish with some real-world hard facts about work and working times, I wanted to mention also a recent BBC inquiry into working conditions in the supply-chain used to produce Apple’s iPhones.

They report appalling condition in a Pegatron factory near Shanghai, with workers working up to 16 hours a day. They also report the exploitation of children in dangerous conditions in mines in Indonesia.

As all big companies expertise today in “Social Responsibility,” Apple was quick to reply that is making a lot of progress to assure decent working conditions along all its supply chain… They claimed to have reached 93% compliance with their generous goal of no more than 60 working-hours a week!!!

Assisi 2012– Greece & Italy

29 Wednesday Aug 2012

Posted by freehaifa in Anti Imperialist, Crisis of Capitalism, Socialism

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Anti Imperialist Camp, Assisi 2012, Euro Zone, Europen Union, Greece, Italy, Syriza

From the time of the Black Panthers I remember the following small story. Long after Black Power won and established its rule in the States, two black businessmen in posh suits were entering a pub in Manhattan when they saw a group of poor white youth sitting with some guitars on the edge of the pavement and singing. One of the black businessmen tells his friend: “See what beat those white folk have in their blood”.

For long time revolutionaries from the 3^rd world used to look from above on their comrades from the imperialist centers. It is true that they enjoyed better living standards and more freedom, but all the real action was in other places. The imperialist countries gained so much from robbing the poor people all over the world that they could buy the consent of their own working class with social benefits and democratic freedoms, corrupt the elite and local leaderships and give a civilized look to their class rule.

This is not true anymore. With China surpassing the US as the major economic power and after the political and economic failure of its military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, the imperialist countries’ ability to bully and rob the rest of the world is not what it used to be.

This led to the global financial crisis that started back in 2007. This time it is not a cyclic crisis, correcting over investment and over capacity, but a structural crisis that already lasts 5 years and is not going away anytime soon. The Assisi 2012 Anti Imperialist camp was a great opportunity for us, coming from the Arab World in the idle of its revolution, to learn how the people in Europe are coping with this crisis.

Greece

On Friday morning, August 24, we met to hear about the situation in Greece, where the crisis is most severe. The comrades from Greece told the story of collapsing health services and education, idling fields and factories, rocketing unemployment and a population that is not sure whether it will have enough to eat. They described the rage of the people at the feeling that they are forced to pay the price for the corruption of the elite. They spoke of the despair as all the sacrifices of the poor people are tunneled to repay the banks and not to rebuild the economy that they destroyed.

But however clear it is what the international and local financial oligarchy is doing and causing, the alternative is far from clear.

Petros Al Achmar, from the Communist Organization of Greece (KOE) and the newly formed left coalition Syriza, presented the new hope of the left. Building a coalition of many political forces of the left since 2001, Syriza succeeded to raise it share of the vote from 5% to 27% during a short period in 2012, as the economic and political crisis reached new heights and people looked for an alternative that is different from the current corrupt system. Petros stressed that the key to the rapid development of Syriza is not only the collection of existing forces but also the openness to the new activists of the mass movement. It required the readiness of the leadership to hear and learn from the new activists and not to force on them its own ready solutions.

As Syriza prepared itself to form an alternative government after the June 17, 2012, elections, and as it rides the mass protest movement more than it leads it, its positions are duly reflecting the mood of the masses. It means that it is clear who is to blame for the crisis, but not too clear how to get out of it. Basically the question of exit from the Euro zone was not yet decided. To say the truth, I don’t know what the right path is, and whether Syriza could lead it, but I enjoyed hearing representatives of the sincere left in Europe trying to cope (even if only mentally, till now) with the task of leading their country.

Yiannis Rachiotis from “Antarsya” and Mikhalis Tiktopoulos spoke for the other part of the Greek left, which is not part of Syriza. They clearly proposed exit from the Euro zone but were more pessimistic about the potential of the mass movement for real influence on the state’s crisis. To some degree they were closer to the Anarchists position (that was not represented), which concentrates on fighting the system in the streets more than on posing a practical alternative. (Though comrade Yiannis made a nice try at posing concrete steps which a future left Greek government may take, including, for example, issuing internal bonds. As before, I enjoyed this one too.)

Italy

The last session of the Camp, on August 26, was dedicated to the crisis in Italy. The economic crisis in Italy is far from the Greek climax, but the crisis of the political system is even more profound. I will not handle it in much detail, but I wanted to mention Italy in connection with the Greek discussion because of the appearance of new type of social movements.

In Sicily a strong protest movement led by farmers and lorry drivers challenges the austerity and neo-liberal policy of the government. It was formed outside the established parties, blaming the whole elite, established political parties and the media for corruption and responsibility to the economic crisis.

From Sardinia we heard Felice Flori, leader of the Sard shepherds. He spoke of a unique local experience, with a broad coalition of popular organizations forming an “assembly” to challenge the established power. He showed a high level of consciousness when he spoke of the deliberations how to build popular power independent of the establishment, while trying to influence the established system through participation in elections.

This new type of popular power, building from the local level by uniting organizations of popular struggle, may be the way to solve the puzzle posed by the Greek comrades. If you start with taking the government from above, let’s say through elections, you may find that with the tools of a capitalist government you can’t really implement a very different policy. If you just fight it in the streets you leave it to the representatives of the system to lead and to give solutions. Maybe they are simply unable to do it. The ordinary people that suffer from the crisis must have some intermediary steps to develop their role from protest to leading a new type of society.

Independence vs. European Unity

Both in Greece and in Italy, one main scheme was the need for national independence or sovereignty. The most convincing argument in this direction is that the rules of the European Union are a dictate of Capitalist Neo-Liberal policies that the local government has no way to challenge. Regaining local independence in decision making is a pre-condition for trying to do something else.

This is in contrast with the natural tendency to think that a greater union is progress. It makes sense at a time of crisis to take a step backward in order to gain self control in a smaller framework. But the left should also regain the initiative and pose its own vision for European unity.

Red Roses in the Arab Spring?

07 Saturday Jul 2012

Posted by freehaifa in Arab Revolution, Socialism

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Arab Revolution, Arab Spring, China, Latin America, Socialism

The regional democratic revolution, nicknamed The Arab Spring, is only at its first steps. After victories in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya there is a tight battle in Syria, Bahrain and Yemen. And many other countries are still waiting for their time to come, not least Palestine. But, as elected governments are established after revolutionary victories, we are reminded that democracy is not an end for itself. What will those governments do and what will they bring for the people that elected them?

Lenin once said that Socialism is “Soviets plus Electricity”. To bring that concept into today’s Arab Revolution, we face the democratic tasks and the economic development tasks. On the side of democracy the soviet option is not currently proposed, but neither does anyone rely solely on the abstract forms of democratic representation. There are a lot of ways that the masses organize and they are conscious that their self organization is essential to keep the revolution going and to prevent a sellout. On the economic side the options are pretty blurred.

You could think that doing better than the old corrupt regimes should be easy enough. Put in place honest managers according to their merits, manage public assets to serve the public and not the regime’s cronies, do away with excessive repression and red tape.

But there are many real reasons why restarting the economy after the revolution is never that easy. First, some destruction and confusion is part of the revolutionary struggle – and you start below the point where the old regime left. Second, however rotten the old regime was, some things were working… Remove the corrupt managers and greedy capitalist cronies, and you may lack the knowledge or the connections to make things going, at least in first period. And this is before we speak of intentional sabotage by some that want to show that the people will not be able to live without them and the “sincere” reluctance of investors at the time of uncertainty…

The multinational companies, imperialist powers and their financial and trade institutes had an interest to keep the old subservient regimes in place. Now they may make life hard for any regime that is not doing their bid, or try to force humiliating bargains between political concessions and economic destruction.

As such an important part of the world is looking for a new economic development path, you would expect that regimes, political tendencies and experts from all over the world will be flocking to propose their solutions. But we are at a very delicate period in the historic economic and theoretical struggle between Capitalism and Socialism.

Five years into the economic crisis in the imperialist centers, which started with the Credit Crunch of 2007, the imperialist powers are still looking for a way out of the crisis themselves. They have very little to offer in advice or money.

On the other side, socialists from China to Latin America are confused by the politics of the Arab Spring. China is doing its things by itself, relies on becoming the first world economic power just by growing when the others are stumbling and tries to avoid ideological conflict. The big argument between Capitalism and Socialism tends to be reduced to a more pragmatic argument about the role of the state, cooperatives and other forms of collective ownership in a mixed economy.

For utilizing the state’s power and resources to economic development, to make them work for the people and not for the (un)chosen few, it is essential to develop the trade unions and political organizations of the working masses.

There is also a lot to learn, not only from China, but also from Latin America. Socialism made big advances in Latin America over the past ten years. It started from Argentine, which refused the dictates of the IMF and the World Bank and emerged from economic collapse to fast development. It continued with Chavez, who brought back the state’s oil company, and the oil’s money, to the service of the Venezuelan people. In country after another left wing governments proved that human development is the basic condition for real economic development.

There are as many failed experiments as there are success stories. Socialism is not a magic and not a ready-made receipt to solve all problems. It is just a conscious attempt to build the economy to serve the people. It is just calling the bluff of Capitalism, which tells you that by letting the rich follow their self interests, somehow they will make everyone’s lives better.

It is time for the new governments of the Arab Spring to start providing solutions to the acute social problems through people-oriented economic developments. The only economic method that proved itself capable of lifting hundreds of millions from poverty and liberating them from humiliation and backwardness is Socialism. If the Arab Spring is designed to blossom, we should start to see some red roses.

An Optimist View on China’s Rise

20 Friday Apr 2012

Posted by freehaifa in China's Rise, Socialism

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

China, Dialectics, Socialism

With all our enthusiasm about the Arab Spring, the most important issue in the current world situation, that is crucial to understanding where the world is headed, is what is going on in China. Assuming that you’re following conventional media, you should know that China has already passed the US as the world’s biggest economy by many indicators and, if no unexpected catastrophe will come in its way, it is well posed to be the major economic super-power within the next decade.

So this is significant in itself – never before has the balance of economic power shifted so fast and so far. But this is only the beginning of the story. The rise of China on the world stage is very different from anything that we have seen before, much like the rise of the working class to political power. Before Britain or the US became top world powers they were already members of the elite club of dominating economies, like the bourgeoisie was a top economic class before it aspired for political dominance. On the other hand, the working class should build its political power from the position of deprivation, just like China is becoming a world power while still basically a poor third world country.

The changes in the world order are very important, as they open new opportunities for all the people that were doomed by the old order. For example, 10 years ago most third world countries were subject to some type of international sanctions imposed by the imperialist masters. The world prices of raw materials, food and other export commodities of the third world were in historical lows, driving billions of people to the verge of hunger. Un-challenged imperialism twisted the whole world economy to serve the thin interests of the multinational and the Capitalist class. Now sanctions are not working any more. You can sell anything to China at a good price and buy anything from it, cheaper and better. Only since the beginning of the 3^rd millennium, with the waning dominance of imperialism, most countries of the third world had the opportunity to start on the course of development.

But world conditions are not enough. The building of the local society, economic development, providing food, education and health to the people – all this should be done on the local level. The fact that China did it proves that it can be done. All people in the poor countries that have to find their own way for social and economic development now look for China and try to understand what is the winning formula.

So the most important question in order to understand where the world is going is whether China is a Capitalist or a Socialist country.

The Capitalist ideology, as expressed by the media and academy, is very ambivalent about characterizing China. On one hand, “nothing succeeds like success”, and, of course, they like to attribute everything that is going right in China to Capitalism. But China is not playing by the Capitalist rules. Main sectors of the economy (energy, communication, banking, etc.) are monopolized by few state owned companies. The state and the communist party are setting development and economic goals and set the rules of the game for state companies, local capitalist and foreign investors. So, in order to prove that real Capitalism is a superior system, pro-capitalists analysts predicts that China will hit a wall unless fully “reforming” to a Capitalist state.

Many Socialists in the West are just as ambivalent about China. Looking at the hard toil and poor conditions of China’s workers and peasants from the height of the privileged working class or petty bourgeoisie comfort in imperialist countries, they find it hard to be impressed by the progress. They forget that the biggest steps that Humanity made toward the “millennium goals” of relieving poverty were the miracle by which Socialism in China improved the lives of more than a billion people. They compare China to the promised Utopia and forget that even in the best system progress requires hard work and will always be gradual.

And China is far from an ideal system. It has plenty of its own contradictions, with corruption, oppression, thriving local and foreign Capitalism and growing inequality. All these contradictions may still halt or even destroy the achievements, but still what was achieved is spectacular and should be explained. Is it Capitalism which, a hundred years after its predicted decay, found a new vitality and for the first time in history made a poor country first class power? Or did the Chinese find the true elusive formula how to build Socialism as a superior economic system?

To try a short answer to this crucial question, I would like to return to a page in the old books of Socialism. We were taught about the struggle between Capitalism and Socialism as an example of Dialectical (Materialist) development of History. Capitalism was the thesis, full of contradictions, creating its own antithesis in the form of Socialism. In order to solve the contradictions of Capitalism, Socialism must prevail. But, in the old book, following the victory of the antithesis over the thesis, there should be a synthesis. This is not a game in Greek words. Any system has its powers that made it work and succeed for some period. In the synthesis the victors, the owners of the new system, are embracing the productive elements of the old system, mobilizing them for the success of the new system.

Fighting for Socialism we were naturally preoccupied with the conflict. We had to overcome the enemy, the Capitalist system. It was “we” or “them”. But Socialism as the victorious antithesis requires some elements of Capitalism in order to build the new economy. Market economy seems to provide one of them. Having Capitalists compete with state companies in the local market is one way to make the new Socialist economy work and serve the needs of the people better. If Socialism is superior it should win not only by the barrel of the gun but also by the explosion of Human productivity and innovation.

In September 2013 I visited Beijing – and wrote an updated post about my love for China.

And in “Free Haifa Extra” you can read some funny stuff about how Western media is distorting facts about China.

Uneven playing ground

How awful the Chinese government can be?

Share this:

Like this:

The deep roots of Catalan aspirations

Sympathy and ambivalence about separatism

The long road to the current referendum

Popular movement

The day of Truth

The vision

Reality check

Share this:

Like this:

The Riddle of the Chinese Miracle

China Going Global

The Crisis that Wasn’t

Share this:

Like this:

Health

Education and Knowledge

Speaking Up

Democracy

Travel and Immigration

Gender equality and Personal Freedom

Technology

Less Work More Life

China and Vietnam

The rebellious human spirit

Fast Changes

Respect All Lives

Share this:

Like this:

Red Wave of Hope

Achievements and Limitations

The Ebb of the Red Wave

Climbing the Spiral

Discussion

A Trotskyist View from Argentina

By: Daniel Gaido

Share this:

Like this:

Reading Ocalan in Haifa, Palestine

Practical and Theoretical base for Democratic Confederalism

Similarities and differences of the situation in Palestine

Some Palestinian experiences with popular democracy

Democratic Confederalism and the Arab Spring

Related posts in Free Haifa

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Greece

Italy

Independence vs. European Unity

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: