Marta Harnecker: Ideas for the struggle #6 -- The need to unite the party left and the social left

[This is the sixth in a series of regular articles. Click HERE for other articles in the series. Please return to Links regularly read the next articles in the series.]
By Marta Harnecker, translated by Federico Fuentes for Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal
1. The rejection by a majority of the people of the globalisation model imposed on our continent intensifies each day given its inability to solve the most pressing problems of our people. Neoliberal policies implemented by large transnational financial capital, which is backed by a large military and media power, and whose hegemonic headquarters can be found in the United States, have not only been unable to resolve these problems but, on the contrary, have dramatically increased misery and social exclusion, while concentrating wealth in increasingly fewer hands.
2. Among those who have suffered most as a result of the
economic consequences of neoliberalism are the traditional sectors of the urban
and rural working classes. But its disastrous effects have also affected many
other social sectors, such as the poor and marginalised, impoverished middle-class
sectors, the constellation of small and medium-sized businesses, the informal sector, medium
and small-scale rural producers, the majority of professionals, the legions of
unemployed, workers in cooperatives, pensioners, the police and the subordinate
cadres of the army (junior officers). Moreover, we should not only keep in mind those who are affected
economically, but also all those who are discriminated and oppressed by the
system: women, youth, children, the elderly, indigenous peoples, blacks,
certain religious creeds, homosexuals, etc.
3.
Neoliberalism impoverishes the great majority of the population of our
countries, those impoverished in the socioeconomic sense and also in the subjective sense.
4.
Some of these sectors have transformed themselves into powerful movements.
Among those are women’s, indigenous and consumer rights movements, and
movements that fight for human rights and in defence of the environment.
5. These movements differ in many ways from the classical
labour movement. Their platforms have a strong thematic accent and they reach across
classes and generations. Their forms of organising are less hierarchical and
rely more on networks than those of the past, while their concrete forms of
actions vary quite a lot.
6.
New social actors have also appeared. What is surprising, for
example, is the capacity to mobilise that has manifested itself among youth, fundamentally organised through
electronic means, with the object of rejecting actually existing globalisation;
resisting the application of neoliberal measures, promotion very powerful mobilisations
against war and now against military occupation, and spreading experiences of
revolutionary struggle, breaking up the information blockade that had
been imposed on left and progressive ideas.
7.
This growing rejection is being expressed through diverse and alternative
practices of resistance and struggle.
8.
The consolidation of left parties, fronts or political processes in
opposition to neoliberalism is undeniable in various countries:
9.
However, despite the depth of the
crisis that this model has provoked, the breadth and variety of affected
sectors that embrace the majority of the population, the multiplicity of demands
that have emerged from society and which continue to remain unmet -- all of
which have produced a highly favourable situation for the creation of a very
broad anti-neoliberal social bloc with enormous social force -- the majority of these growing expressions
of resistance and struggle are still far from truly representing a real threat to
the system.
10.
I believe that one of the reasons that helps explain this situation is that
parallel to these objective conditions which
are favourable for the construction of a broad alternative social bloc against
neoliberalism, there are very
complicated subjective conditions which have to do with a profound problem:
the dispersion of the left.
11.
And that is why I believe that for an effective struggle against neoliberalism,
it is of strategic importance to articulate the different left sectors, understanding the left to mean all
those forces that stand up against the capitalist system and its profit-driven
logic, and who fight for an alternative society based on humanism and
solidarity, built upon the interests of the working classes.
12. Therefore,
the left cannot simply be reduced to the left that belongs to left parties or
political organisations; it also includes social actors and movements. Very
often these are more dynamic and combative than the former, but do not belong
to or reject belonging to any political party or organisation. Among the former
are those who prefer to accumulate forces by using institutions to aid
transformation, while others opt for revolutionary guerrilla warfare; among the
latter, some attempt to create autonomous social movements and different types
of networks.
13. To simplify, I have decided to refer to the first
group as the political left and the
second group as the social left, even
though I recognise that this conceptual separation is not always so in practice.
In fact, the more developed social movements tend to acquire socio-political
dimensions.
14. To sum up, I believe that only by uniting the
militant efforts of the most diverse expressions of the left will we be able to
fully carry out the task of building the broad anti-neoliberal social bloc that
we need. The strategic task therefore is
to articulate the party and social left so that, from this starting point, we
can unite into a single colossal column, the growing and disperse social
opposition.
Marta Harnecker’s bibliography on the topic:
La izquierda después de Seattle, Siglo XXI España, 2002.
[Marta Harnecker is originally from Chile where she participated in the revolutionary process of 1970-1973. She has written extensively on the Cuba Revolution, and on the nature of socialist democracy. She now lives in Caracas and is a participant in the Venezuelan revolution.]