The Conspiracy is Capitalism's Reviews > Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism

Much-needed uplifting perspectives on building for social needs...

Preamble:
--This introductory book (interview format) is in some ways an inverse of Vijay’s other recent intro, Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations. Instead of unpacking imperialism's depravities, this book is a celebration of the censored struggles for decolonization and socialism that best captures Vijay’s constructive encouragement lost in many deconstructive critiques. Vijay has been a favorite speaker as well: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS...

Highlights:

1) Pure critique greets disillusionment:
--How much has the Western academic Left silently adopted capitalism’s TINA (There Is No Alternative, ex. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?), leaving space for the Alt-Right to parody populist discontent (The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump) during recent crises?
...Vijay refers to Left “post-Marxists” as “pre-Marxists”, where Western Marxism abandoned real-world conditions of political economy/mass movements (steming from rejection of USSR and disinterest in the Global South) in favor of abstract philosophical/cultural critiques.
--With the USSR’s dismantlement, Western anticommunist social democrats soon learned their welfare state compromise with capitalists was revoked to implement TINA globally (“globalization”). Vijay counters the Left’s echo-chamber subcultures (narcissism of small differences, see The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity) with the messy commitments to real-world solidarity and empathy.

I would prefer any day to spend my time fighting to build popular unity among people than just being critical of the world.

You see, here’s the problem with abstract intellectualism. It is too easy to stand outside the practical activity of building the future and offer one’s criticisms. You might end up with the best criticisms of everything because you have taken a step outside the stream of reality, and take the position of objectivity. You’ve taken a god-like perch. […] All the things you are saying are probably true, but I learned something very early on from Marx. In the 11th Thesis on Feuerbach, Marx writes, “The philosophers have interpreted the world. The point, however, is to change it.” What he’s talking about is the intellectual that leaves the stream of reality, stands outside it and says, Ah, I interpret that world over there. You understand things best if you are in the midst of changing them. You have to root yourself in the stream of history; […] It’s difficult because it means you have to make commitments to people; you are to understand the limitations, but you have to find a way to exit our problems rather than judge the world one way or the other. [Bold emphases added]

2) Real-world peoples and “new intellectuals”:
--Vijay frames socialist history as “a series of experiments”, “zigs and zags” as we must recognize human limitations and contradictions. “Part of being political is not to run away from the people but to draw the people into confrontation with the present toward the future.”
--Most interpret Antonio Gramsci as identifying “traditional intellectuals” (serving status quo power structure) and “organic intellectuals” (organic to their specific class/group). Vijay's interpretation adds the communist as “new intellectuals” who:
i) learn from within the dispossessed/moments (which have their own “organic intellectuals”), rather than merely from a distance in academia (“traditional intellectuals”)
ii) isolate the “contradictory consciousness” (where the exploited are also targeted by status quo education/culture industries/divide-and-rule); the “new intellectuals” makes use of their privileged time/resources which “organic intellectuals” of the dispossessed may lack
iii) present the contradictions back to the dispossessed, acting as “permanent persuaders” seeking synthesis, rather than merely report back to academia (a power structure funded and exploited by corporate think tanks/military intelligence; i.e. “traditional intellectuals”).
...Consciousness is not enough, as the dispossessed require opportunities to build confidence to change their conditions. Vijay has switched from teaching in formal academia to directing the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, etc.

3) Real-world histories and the censored Global South:
--Vijay’s magnum opus The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World challenges the notion that theory comes from the Global North/West, whereas the Global South only produces survivalist guerilla manuals.
--The Global South shares a similar context with the USSR just liberated from the Tsarist monarchy with mostly rural peasantry exhausted from the imperialist WWI and facing further imperialist/fascist threats. Thus, the Global South's Left did not so readily succumb to the West's bi-polar Red Scare Cold War; the USSR was critiqued within the context of communist experimentation (including recognizing the successes, from social programs that pushed the West to compromise on domestic welfare to aiding decolonization/buffer against direct US imperialism, etc.). For more on the mechanisms of imperialism, see:
-intro: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions
-dive (by Vijay’s favourite political economists): Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present
--This legacy is connected to today’s examples of socialist community participation in social experiments (ex. producers' cooperatives) and struggles (ex. COVID19 responses prioritizing social needs) in Kerala (India), Cuba, Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement, Vietnam, Laos, etc. Socialism is hardly “big government”; these are examples of vibrant communities with various social organizations, which includes/interacts with a Leftist government (if in power). For Vijay on China: https://youtu.be/8-m-DZHLNGs
--Juxtapose this with Western “democracy”, with sham elections (periodic/low turnout/financed by money-power/divisive, narrow topics avoiding economic power that can unite the public; see The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement) and economy-first profit-first responses to social crises such as COVID-19 (the abysmal responses of the US/UK despite their vast imperialist resources, as well as Brazil/India besides Kerala) that ironically rely on “big (capitalist) government” given the absence of robust community organizations! Of course, the capitalist state is always there to bail out the capitalists. This is sophisticated capitalist authoritarianism and alienation.
--I’ve referenced 2 David Graeber books. Graeber, a diverse “anarchist”, was the first author to inspire me with constructive social imagination (of a global scale that does not neglect the Global South) beyond deconstructive critiques. I’m re-reading his works, and while there are plenty of debates on history/theories/strategies with a diverse Marxist like Vijay, there are still much more to synthesize; a messy world demands a diverse toolbox.
--To finish according to the book’s uplifting spirit:

There’s a line from the eighteenth-century poet Akbar Allahabadi, aadmi tha, bari mushkil se insaan hua. We were people; with great difficulty we became human. The process of struggle is a humanizing process. It’s in the process of struggle that you and I learn to be better people.