Viva! – La Revolucion? Or, why not all protests are progressive.

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Anti-Chavez protesters, Caracas, Venezuela, January 2010.

IMAGINE that in 2014 New Zealanders elect a genuine left-wing coalition government. Highly unlikely, I know, but for the purposes of this posting let’s assume that Hone Harawira finds a way of getting the Maori and Pasifika non-vote to the polling booths; David Cunliffe wins over the ABC faction; and Russel Norman recovers his revolutionary colours.

The new government embarks on a hundred-days of radical economic and constitutional reform. Not only does the new Finance Minister, Russel Norman, authorise a programme of Quantitative Easing, but, egged-on by his Associate Finance Minister, John Minto, he also seizes the $20 billion tucked away in the ACC’s accounts. (Yes, there really is that much money in the ACC’s accounts: the National Party’s decision to replace the corporation’s original “pay-as-you-go” funding system with its current “fully-funded” regime, means that there has to be!)

With these sizeable financial resources at its command, the new government immediately launches a crash housing construction programme to accommodate every homeless citizen in the country. Free meals are provided in every school. Doctor visits are 100 percent subsidised by the state. A nationwide survey of working people is launched preparatory to a comprehensive revision of New Zealand’s employment laws. A publicly funded national newspaper is launched. Billions are poured into upgrading and extending the country’s rail network. The partially privatised energy generators are re-nationalised. And, to tackle the huge backlog of environmental projects left unfunded by the previous government, thousands of young, jobless people join the new Conservation Corps.

Unemployment plummets and the morale of the poor and the marginalised soars.

But the reaction of middle-class New Zealanders is nothing like so positive. They are alarmed by the new government’s determination to devise a more equitable system of personal taxation. And its plans to break up the social homogeneity of city suburbs – by building homes for working-class families in some of the nation’s leafiest streets – has them fretting about their “personal safety”. (Not to mention plummeting property values!)

When the consultation exercise on workers’ rights reveals overwhelming employee support for a new, inclusive, and much more democratic trade union movement, and the Government’s white paper on tax reform foreshadows a massive increase in the fiscal obligations of the middle- and upper-classes, all Hell breaks loose.

It begins with a protest march in defence of private property and individual liberty. Not since Tania Harris’s massive “Kiwis Care” demonstration of 1981 has Auckland seen anything like it. Tens of thousands of well-off suburbanites pour onto the streets banging pots and pans and chanting “First your property – then your liberty!”

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Provided with tents, mattresses, bedding and food by the owners of businesses large and small, and with the full backing of the private news media, the protesters take possession of Aotea Square. Calling itself “Liberty!”, the new movement swiftly organises marches and occupations in the other main centres.

When the Government attempts to clear these cities’ centres of the increasingly aggressive occupiers, “Liberty!” uses social media to summon thousands of middle-class high-school and university students to “defend the squares”. As images of these youngsters fighting running battles with the Police flood the Internet, the Deputy Prime-Minister, Hone Harawira, issues a summons to the youth of Te Tai Tokerau and Manukau to defend the gains they have won. A vast hikoi of cars, vans and commandeered trucks and busses advances on Central Auckland from north and south. In just a matter of hours, the shelves of the city’s gun shops are stripped bare.

NOW, imagine how these events might look to someone watching the news on the other side of the planet. If all you knew about New Zealand was that it was the location for the filming of Lord of the Rings, then the carefully edited broadcasts of tens-of-thousands of people waving banners inscribed with “Liberty!”, and the citizen journalist video clips of youngsters being tasered and pepper-sprayed by riot police, might just persuade you that something exciting and progressive was taking place in this faraway little country.

But the person on the other side of the world, watching the television coverage, and believing that what he or she was seeing was something akin to a revolutionary uprising would be very mistaken. As mistaken as the people who, observing tens-of-thousands of middle-class women from the wealthy suburbs of Santiago banging pots and pans in protest against the socialist government of Salvador Allende back in 1973, would have been had they assumed that what they were witnessing was something brave and progressive.

Large numbers of people in the streets are not always proof of revolutionary fervour. The middle-class opponents of Hugo Chavez regularly organised demonstrations numbering scores of thousands. Very few, if any, of the demonstrators were the friends of the poor and the marginalised. Indeed, if they could have they would have hung Chavez’s supporters from every lamp-post in Caracas – and cheered themselves hoarse.

Before we start expressing our solidarity with the protesters thronging the streets of Istanbul and Sao Paulo, let us be sure that their causes really are our causes.

Let us take care that the angry masses we salute are the makers – and not the undertakers – of La Revolucion.

11 COMMENTS

  1. I think I need to point out that Allende’s biggest mistake was to issue a directive to the military to disarm the workers, who were his staunchest supporters. Th workers had totally stuck it to the middle class aspirationalists and business occupying in masse their factories and generally beating six kinds of blue out of them on the street. By disarming the workers Allende paved the way for a trouble free CIA backed coup. Lets hope a left Govt in Aotearoa is arming them, eh commandant Trotter ; D

    Seriously though Chris, how can those protesters opposing grandiose legacy projects whle demanding better education, healthcare and the ending of evictions from the favelas be the disaffected right?

    • “Seriously though Chris, how can those protesters opposing grandiose legacy projects whle demanding better education, healthcare and the ending of evictions from the favelas be the disaffected right?”

      Simple. Some of them are, some of them aren’t. The protests against the handing over of property in Rio to the filthy rich and dispossession of the Aldeia de Maracanã under the cover of the World Cup and the Olympics were happening long before the latest demonstrations. The demonstrations against the rise in public transport fares were organised by Movimento Passa Livre, and became something much bigger. The middle classes in Rio and São Paulo, who have a Teabagger style hatred for the PT, became involved, often at the urging of the big media conglomerates. The protests then became against Dilma and against corruption, at least when the PT is involved. Left activists were physically attacked by people among the protestors, as well as by the Police. Slogans against the corruption of the parties seen to represent the middle class, which has always been on a scale that puts the PT to shame, were conspicuously absent.
      Chris is partially correct. The protestors are not wholly progressive nor wholly reactionary, but the right is doing its level best to take them over. Please note that I don’t mean a right wing that believes in regressive taxes, but a right wing that Cameron Slater and Kyle Chapman would feel at home in, a right that believes in extrajudicial executions, legalised torture, the suspension of elections, the total denial of civil rights, press censorship, and pseudomilitary parades with the singing of the National Anthem before school each day. Luckily, many Brazilians are alert to the dangers, which are the same as they experienced in 1964.

      • The group attacking the left are fascists “casa pintadas” painted faces. A call has already gone out for a united front against them to prevent a facist coup. The fact remains though that
        Passa Livre has been championed by the left since its inception, mostly the left groups now under attack. This is doubly damming as the solution is not to retreat to our ivory towers while facists attempt to take control of the popular movement but to stand united with every available soul, as a front united against the facist threat. While at the same time levelling unrelenting criticism at the pt itself who has become incredibly corrupt, taking kickbacks from developers and using unions as a tool to stifle dissent.

        “Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral. ”
        ― Paulo Freire

        To not take direct action immediately to revolutionarily politicise and organise the Brazilian protests while repelling those opportunist elements would be disasterous. We must encourage action and solidarity. Lest we find ourselves on the wrong side of history.

        • 1. Caras pintadas is the name you are looking for. I doubt if they are all died in the wool fascists. Like any fascist movement involving more than a few very rich, the majority will just be fools. Some will be genuinely concerned about corruption and will have swallowed the view that it’s due to political parties. Opus Dei will also be involved, not least through the Governor of São Paulo, Geraldo Alckmin.

          2. The left in Brazil should be in a tactical alliance with the PT to stop any attempted coup in its tracks. The PT isn’t any great socialist party, but it has bourgeois democratic legitimacy and this cannot be allowed to be taken away by a neanderthal minority. No way should any of us be stuck in ivory towers, but equally important is to recognise the reality of the situation. It looks like the manipulation of the movement is being opposed and Brazilians know what’s happening. The workers have made some real material advances during the years of PT government and will not give these up easily. The middle class can get stuffed – they’ll just have to get used to seeing workers at airports to catch flights rather than to clean toilets. I’m cautiously optimistic.

          • How can you form an alliance with the PT while supporting the protests against their actions, its untenable. The PT must be criticised. Or is the left so shallow it can offer no alternative to PT corruption? That would be a crisis.
            To throw their lot in with the PT the left would be condoning police violence against the protesters, as the police represent the PT in government and are effectively under their control.
            The left would then become a movement to crush the revolutionary spirit of those workers who want a transparent progressive workers government, they would have to march alongside the facist police forces, in an effort to smash the revolution from fear of their own inability to win arguments.
            They should under no conditions support the PT or their Fascist police forces who have been supporting the fascist thugs in their attacks on the militant left.

            • Of course the PT must be criticised, but not by replacing Dilma in the presidency by Reinan Calheiros, one of the most corrupt politicians Brazil has seen for years. That would be the result of “Fora Dilma”.
              You might also note that the Police are run on the state level. Neither São Paulo nor Rio de Janeiro states have PT governors. Buses are run on the municipal level, and SP does have a PT Mayor. Corruption is run on every level from household to national.
              Anyway, thankfully the Brazilian left is organising and realises the danger. Your approach reminds me of that promoted by Stalin in pre-Nazi Germany, which didn’t make any real distinction between Hitler and the Social Democrats. That really worked out well, and that’s what’s at stake in Brazil.
              This is happening in São Paulo now:
              http://racismoambiental.net.br/2013/06/grupos-de-periferia-se-articulam-em-sao-paulo-para-defender-democracia-e-dilma/

              • My approach differs markedly from that forced by Stalin.
                First I do not believe that the PT are “social facists” as Stalin put it. The party is redeemable but only if it splits from this obvious corruption and distances itself from its existing leadership, criticism will assist this. to continue using period examples, just as the SPD did when it supported the first world war both the ISPD and Sparticus League split. Was not the vote of the SPD leadership for war as much if not more so resposible for the rise of Hitler than the Direction of Stalin (I revile them both). further more when the SPD used the freikorps to smash the remaining left, those who would have most opposed hitler, were already dead and buried.

                Second I’m not advocating that all social democratic parties must be excluded, just the one whos corruption damages the legitamacy of all others. Stalin called for attacks on all social democratic parties fracturing the left on the broadest possible lines. Social Democratic parties must be key to any united front, which I believe are the best hope for a broad base to fight fascism.

                Fortunately the choice now lies in the hands of the Brazilian people. In who I have every confidence and share their love of solidarity and humanity.

  2. Yes, good call to be cautious in expectations.

    As for the protests in Brazil, they are, like also the ones in Istanbul, not so much the poor from the favelas rising up against injustices, although they will also participate.

    Many, if not most, of these protesters will be the new middle class, or the ones still down at the transition gates into middle class living standards. The developments for the football world cup and the Olympics a couple of years later have led to massive spending on stadiums, infrastructure projects like road and rail improvements, rehousing of people shifted from some areas into others.

    This is costing a lot, and also driving prices and living costs up. Some may benefit, but spending on other essential services remain constrained. Some money sinks into corrupt pockets too.

    The economic boom Brazil enjoyed for a fair few years is now slowing, inflation is increasing, and I believe the currency exchange rate is having hiccups, so gains in incomes for many are in danger of being eroded. The increase in public transport fees set the rage off, but many are angry about the level of corruption at local, regional and state levels. The government is one that claims to be standing for the working people and the ones supporting better living standards for all, to grow the middle class and more.

    But they are the establishment now, also prone to corrupt practices.

    It is indeed more the new and not so new middle class that went onto the streets, also attracting many poor of course.

    But many of the middle class are not necessarily there to represent all, in a still extremely unequal society. The middle class is most of all concerned about their living standards and security, and they may be more so like the middle class in many other countries, also in New Zealand, many having a dim view of the poor.

    In Turkey the situation is similar. The protests were largely by those with a western outlook, with a belief in personal freedom, in a society that is not dominated by islamic values. It is not so much a protest by the lower or working class of Turkey.

    Even the Arab Spring protests were in many countries not one and the same. Many protested for more freedom, for employment opportunities for the many well educated middle class, who saw no future in the reglemented and corrupt regimes run by cliques, supported by military and police. The poor rather supported the Muslim Brotherhood parties, and many still do.

    In New Zealand the chances to see Labour and Greens win an election and form a government do not look so great, despite of the odd improved poll. The middle class here is in part comfortable with this government, ensuring their incomes, lower mortgage payments, stable and even growing property prices are ensured. They are also a class breaking up into working poor and the traditional and better of middle class.

    With global protests it seems, they are short lived, poorly organised, and sudden outbreaks of dissent by the internet and smart phone connected new citizens. They are not solid movements, they just express anger or dissatisfaction on selected issues and share not common programs.

    So I would not expect too much, in all those places, and certainly I have been disappointed so often here in New Zealand, it is not likely to happen, to have a rising “movement” for resolute, common change happen all that soon.

    Nice it is to dream, but reality does usually catch up with us.

  3. A pretty superficial analysis Chris.

    Your glowing account of the PT’s program gives your game away.
    Let’s not indulge in protests for fear they are taken over by the right. Let’s work thru the PT and CUT to push for more reforms.

    The point is that the PT is trapped in a popular front with the right and playing the bosses game can’t deliver what the poor need.
    The poor are kept in place by the corrupt police, but the young educated, anarchistic elements who kicked of this protest are not so easily silenced.

    The program of the demonstrations is working class. The ‘middle class’ used so frequently to describe better off workers are now leading the fight and drawing in organised labor. In Brazil organised labour is an aristocracy of labour with jobs in the formal economy. The vast majority of workers are jobless or underemployed in the black economy. It is not surprising that some of them are fooled into supporting the fascist agenda of blaming the PT and organised labour for their plight.

    The objective of the right is to mobilise a fascist movement to stage a coup against the PT and the left. Therefore there is no way to avoid the violence being meted out by the states, especially those run by the right with their corrupt police. The demand for ‘no violence’ is futile.

    As the fascist mobs begin to appear on the streets backed by the police the left cannot run for cover and you can expect the left and the broad base of inactive workers to get active.

    The answer has to be that the workers form popular assemblies and defence committees and create a power base to defend themselves from state violence and a fascist coup.

    Inevitably when a revolution attempts to placate a counter-revolution it is lost.

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