Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1
Adam Smith. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.
1776.
power (which is just one form of power) to create a society where the common
people governed. Thus far, democracy has been unable to give the common
people decision-making power and seemingly never even intended to give the
common people wealth and other forms of power. Critically, democracy has
failed.
The primary cause of this failure is indeed the natural design of democracy, which
is unable to challenge actual (or other forms of) power, such as wealth. Instead,
democracy contests positional authority and visible structures of power. In other
words, only people with formal decision-making positions are subject to
democratic scrutiny and only they are noticeable. The masters of our societies
possess an informal hold over our world. They are not elected or appointed into
any particular democratic position and are thus immune from democratic process.
Moreover, they are certainly not necessarily in clear visible control. They do not
publicise their activity, make transparent their power or intend to reveal
themselves.
As people, we have mistaken positional authority with concentrated power. We
are fantasised by formal positions. Still today, we weave narratives about
monarchs and historical leaders. Our present rulers are subject to personality cults
and idolisation. In doing this, we create the illusion that formal authority
possesses significant power. In reality, thrones are ceremonial, symbolic and
powerless. They distract the common people from the hidden processes where
true (or stronger forms of) power exists.
What democracy achieves (although seldom) is to give the common people the
ability to influence formal authority. It never has and is currently unable to
challenge the hidden power dynamics of our societies. Giving people the ability to
elect a president and lawmakers is invaluable if all those leaders will be
incapacitated by the masters. This is why democratically-elected leaders struggle
to alleviate poverty, establish adequate justice, develop their countries
significantly, grant everyone free and equal protection of liberties, solve major
socio-economic problems and improve the standard of life of their people. If
democratically-elected leaders truly had power, they would have the capacity to
achieve these objectives.
Instead, these leaders grow to realise that our current system of governance is
flawed. Once they ascend to the throne, they learn of its valuelessness. The
turning cogs of the world are uninterrupted by elections and the people who win
them. If anything, wealth (and therefore power) continues to concentrate itself
despite all our democratic efforts to spread it.
Consider that democracies never subject power-holders in societies to elections to
determine if they should maintain their power. We do not vote to determine
whether multinational corporations or billionaires should keep their wealth. We
do not vote to determine whether people with any particular identity privilege
should maintain any of the benefits of their privilege. These are not the sort of
elections that democracies host. Our elections do not challenge structures of
power, the ideological roots of our societies or the particular people with
significant power. Since, democracies never do this, they will never be able to
share power.
Instead, democracy can sometimes facilitate the process for the power-holders to
reaffirm their power. If a particular financial institution, multinational
corporation or wealthy person wanted people to support, know of or adopt a
particular idea, those power structures could undergo an extensive advertising
venture and spread their idea to entire populations. They could fund political
candidates´ election campaigns and inspire the candidate to spread the idea. If the
candidate is elected, the idea continues to spread through governance structures.
Even if the candidate is not elected, the idea could still cement itself in the
support base of that candidate and the candidate´s efforts until the next election.
Conversely, the common people cannot undergo extensive advertising, they
cannot spread ideas easily to entire populations and they cannot influence the
campaign of political candidates (except in the minority of cases where they
collectivise strongly). This means, the common people do not have access to
democratic mechanisms to share values, thoughts and opinions. The free market
of ideas is dominated by the privileged power-holders who use this monopoly of
conscious to maintain power, limit the thought that leads to alternative possible
realities, keep the disenfranchised within a state of mental incapacity and to
indoctrinate their own beliefs over entire populations. The common people,
whose ideas are various, liberating and progress to better forms of living, cannot
fairly compete and are quite easily opposed, crushed and erased. Within our
information societies, the common people do not currently possess the power to
challenge, replace and contribute to our understanding of the world and in which
ways, we should seek to change it. This form of power is what they are most
deprived of and it is this form of power which a democracy should foremost assist
the common people in realising.
This is already well-realised in moral discourse. Isaiah Berlin argues that being free
from harm and oppression is only one form of freedom, negative liberty. Positive
liberty requires the ability to take certain actions to achieve certain ends. He
argues “those who have ever valued liberty for its own sake believed that to be free
to choose, and not to be chosen for, is an inalienable ingredient in what makes
human being human.”2 Berlin’s criticism remains well alive in modern states. We
are all chosen for. Even though we have the right to pursue politics, become
representatives and potentially even president, most of us lack the substantive
ability and privilege for reasonable success. However, the flaw lies in a material
truth far greater than Berlin's separation of liberties. Even if we all possessed
sufficient positive liberty to pursue governance, the electoral system necessarily
creates losers and our governments are necessarily composed of by a minority of
people. This means that most people will be chosen for and will never ascend into
a position of power. By design, democracies separate the governor from the
governed, where such a separation is justified by elections -- which are themselves
circumspect. An alternative that would grant the common people positive liberty
is a decentralised state. There, they have more direct access to share their ideas,
take actions to achieve particular ends and contribute to the social nature of the
society they live within. The power to rule instead of be ruled is one that intends
to underpin democracy, yet its achievement has fallen far short.
In purpose, democracy is supposed to shift power from the present power-holders
to the presently persecuted. This is rarely the case. Often (because of this), people
think of the world in the form of systems. It is the view of many disgruntled
people that there is an oppressive system actively working to oppress and
maintain itself. This is untrue. Systems are not naturally occurring phenomena
that create and maintain themselves. Their cogs are operated by people that have
access and power. When global markets react to the political activity of a country,
it is people with capital that are responding to those political activities. There are
people behind the systems of the world. These are the masters of our societies.
2
Isaiah Berlin. Four Essays on Liberty. 1969.
We understood this quite clearly after the advent of colonialism. That system was
not a naturally occurring phenomena. It was caused by people like Leopold II,
Otto von Bismarck and Cecil John Rhodes. Similarly, our current global
economic markets, foreign direct investors, credit-rating agencies, financial
institutions and multinational companies are also people. They are of the same
nature of the global colonisers of history. They are simply more hidden behind
complex economic structures and intransparent power relations. However, the
consequences of their oppression are just as brutal and dehumanising when we
consider what the image of poverty is. It is the image of bone-starved children in
dust bowls who are absent of human dignity and for many of them, they
eventually lose their lives.
The common people, through the actions of the masters, have little access to any
of their democratic dues. These are, most visibly, the positive rights (housing,
education, water, safety, health, food) which governments must supply to their
citizenry and create mechanisms for their access before they are realised as rights.
The ability for governments to deliver these rights will depend on the capacity for
that government to freely distribute resources and create those mechanisms.
However, governments are unable to pursue radical redistribution without
avoiding the backlash of local and international markets (the people with capital
power). If governments attempt radical policies (by which I mean, policies in
favour of liberating the common people), they sacrifice investment from wealthy
people and countries, thus incapacitating them from liberating the common
people and potentially leaving those governments worse-off.
So, governments do not pursue radical policy. Instead they are forced to pursue
neoliberal policy (low taxes, deregulation, privatisation), which satisfies the
masters. This sort of policy is satisfactory to power-holders because it does not
empower the common people, challenge the power of the masters, restructure our
societies or achieve actual democracy. Even when governments pursue progressive
social liberal policy (welfare, affirmative action, progressive tax) power-holders
maintain their control over these governments through the insistence of debt
repayments and the threat to disinvest for risky political behaviour. In this sense,
democratically elected governments are effectively powerless. They are unable to
determine the magnitude of their budgets and social spending. They may have the
limited freedom to determine where to spend what they do have (a very very
limited freedom when considering austerity measures), but they are powerless in
deciding how much they have.
This is similar to the scenario of the poison-punished child. Our national
governments have the choice to determine where to spend, but not to determine
how much to spend. In South Africa, debt-service costs comprise of 11.9% of
budget expenditure and is the second-highest growing budget expenditure.3 That
means 12 cents of every rand spent is dedicated to debt-servicing and the amount
we pay to debt-servicing grows higher each year than the amount for healthcare,
social services, security and other budget expenditure items. Similarly, Nigeria’s
Debt Management Office (DMO) reportedly disclosed that 34.2 percent of
Nigeria’s revenue is spent on debt-service costs.4 So, the country with the greatest
GDP in Africa is restricted in how it spends its budget. This issue is not unique to
these African powerhouses. Developing countries around the world are restricted
by debt servicing.
This is not power. It is illusion. The consequence of this powerlessness is that
positive rights are not achieved by the most vulnerable members of societies. The
government is unable to build and maintain quality public schools, quality public
hospitals, quality affordable housing, adequate policing, access to water and a
range of more positive rights in the communities where the most vulnerable
reside. These people thus have inadequate access to their own rights. In effect,
they have not realised these rights.
Sometimes, we can hold particular governments accountable for their inadequacy,
corruption and maladministration. Sometimes, there is more that our
governments could and should do to assist the common people in achieving their
rights. However, even under a perfectly administered, non-corrupt and
competent government, the common people will lack the achievement of their
rights. There will remain the interests of the masters, who will still create
governments that are powerless. A government that is well-administered is just
more effective in implementing its plans and spending its money, but is still not
autonomous in shifting power, determining its plans and deciding how much
3
South African National Treasury. Budget Review. 2018.
4
BRT News. Nigeria Commits 34% Of Revenue To Debt Servicing – DMO.
2018.
money it will be able to spend -- it is still held ransom by the cogs of negative
consequences for attempting ideas that are too radical.
So, the primary barrier to the achievement of the rights of people are the masters
of our societies. Sadly, the only people who have the interest to fight against these
power-holders to achieve the rights of the common people are the ones that
experience this lack of rights. Their lack of positive rights prevents them from
developing their capabilities, which includes the different capacities required to
successfully oppose power-holders. So, they have the interest but not the capacity
to achieve their rights.
Conversely, the people who have adequate access to positive rights (health,
housing, education, safety) and the capacity to oppose the power-holders have no
interest to do so. First, these elite people advance their own interests, which
includes becoming a master themselves. They have the capacity to ascend to that
social position and certainly, they attempt to. Second, these elite people fear they
will lose their privileges if they oppose the power-holders. They would indeed
have to sacrifice some of their luxuries for others to achieve their rights. These
elite people would rather advance the selfish interest to live in luxury than to
allow the common people to achieve rights. Third, these elite people are not
negatively affected by the cogs of the world. They are mostly protected from the
plague of problems faced by the common people. Their immunity and separation
creates an evil indifference which motivates them away from taking any
significant and valuable action to assist the common people. So, they have the
capacity but not the interest to achieve the rights of the common people.
The result is a social hierarchy with masters positioned foremost at the top. They
are followed by the privileged. Following them are the common people. These are
the same conditions observed by Adam Smith in 1776 and the same conditions
that democracy intended to disestablish. In effect, our societies are replications of
the previous feudal order. There remains a micro minority elite similar to
monarchs and divine rulers. Beneath them is a minority elite with access to
enormous privileges similar to the aristocracy and feudal lords. At the bottom are
the common people, together with their governments. They are powerless.
Meanwhile, the defenders of democracy have developed a painful arrogance about
the weakness of democratic political thought. They maintain ignorance to the
inability of our present democratic systems to shift power. For them, the current
state of the world is either satisfactory or is still changeable through democratic
process. They are determined in the belief that regular national or presidential
elections is a valuable and effective mechanism to address the various social ills
that plague the common people.
This is untrue. General elections may transfer positional authority (sometimes),
but political power and in fact, all power remains among an elite minority. In this
world, there is material want, hunger, identity-based persecution, conflict and
definitely, class oppression. This is something that must be unhinged vigorously
and radically if we are to ever free the common people. We must accept that the
ballot box is rigged and insufficient. How else shall we ever achieve liberty?
Along this, we should call for caution. The demise of democratic values should be
diagnosed carefully. The cruel and politically-minded will observe the flaws of
democracy with the intention of encouraging an even harsher alternative. We
should not fear political motives nor political actors, however, we should be
concerned if their interests truly align with the common people. Even members of
far-left organisations can themselves be compromised by human frailty and
chauvinism. Too often, liberators have proven themselves autocrats with
dispensation to keep and centralise power. If this occurs, the oppression of the
common people persists. So, as we consider the various problems plaguing
modern democratic states, we should place the interests of the common people as
our primary concern.
In this sense, there is a clear distinction between goodness and not. Goodness
expresses itself as the genuine attitude to represent the interests of disadvantaged
groups, solve the issues they encounter and ensure their wellbeing. It is for these
good people, that I write this discourse. It is my hope that the good and common
people will be inspired to remedy our modern democracies and give power to the
common people.
THE ILLUSION OF POWER
It is necessary to investigate the systems that govern us to criticise and improve
them. Anyone that rejects discourse on the failures of democracy also blocks off
the ability for us to fix its failures, at the expense of the common people. The
belief that democracy is perfect is misguided illusion. It is important to recognise
this. Moreover, any belief that our current form of democracy is the best possible
conception of governance may be an even greater misbelief. However, before we
attempt to remedy the great structural problems facing our modern democratic
systems, let us unpack some of the strongest symptoms of the disease which is
killing it.
The United States Department of State, through its Bureau of International
Information Programs, published a series of one-page primers of the principles
underpinning the system of democracy5. The hegemonic power of the US resulted
in the global understanding of democracy´s principles to mirror those of the US.
But even without that influence, the modern system of democracy naturally tends
toward three central pillars - human rights, the rule of law and representative
governance through elections. There are certainly more elements existent within
democracy that further qualify the strength of a democracy, but without the
coexistence of the three mentioned practices, a state´s governance ceases to be
democratic altogether.
For instance, the free press is certainly a democratic principle, but we would not
necessarily cease to call a state a democracy altogether if the press was heavily
censored, while the three central pillars were maintained. We might refer to the
state as a weak democracy, but we might still conceive its governance as generally
democratic. This is not similar for these central principles. If there are no rights
afforded to people, there is no rule of law, and there are no free and fair elections
then a state´s governance is definitively non-democratic. Moreover, the existence
of these central pillars should organically give rise to other features of a
democracy. For instance, a strong presence of human rights, the rule of law and
attempts to create a fair electoral system would work together to create greater
press freedoms. This should be a natural consequence of these three pillars being
operational.
Therefore, with more certainty, modern democracy can be expressed through
these three pillars. It is these principles established within modern democracy that
we should investigate in relation to the liberation of the common people.
5
United States Department of State. Principles of Democracy. 2008.
I will lay out these principles and some criticism of the extent to which they are
realised, if they are realised at all. I, and many of the common people, are certainly
in support of these crucial democratic principles. We have no intention of doing
away with them. We should just be dissatisfied with the reality of their
non-existence and we should be determined to achieve them. Notably, the
existence of power-holders whose interests oppose the certain realisation of these
three principles obviously conclude that many of them remain unrealised.
MAJORITY RULE, MINORITY RIGHTS
Power and privilege protectionism
The primer states that these are the ¨twin pillars holding up the very foundation
of what we mean by democratic government.¨ It clarifies that majority rule
cannot extend to tyranny over the minority and that the fundamental rights of all
people, especially minorities can never be removed, not even by an elected
majority. The mechanism through which this principle is brought to reality are
constitutional rights, which are described in a nation's Bill of Rights. So, in
scrutinising how far this principle has been realised, we need to look towards
constitutions.
The central and structural problem with any nation's constitution are the
interests, influences and compromises made in its drafting. We should investigate
the identity and interests of its drafters, the influence of power-holders in the
document´s drafting and the extent to which the document actually achieves the
democratic principle it is created to achieve.
The first recorded conception of a declaration of rights is the English Magna
Carta Libertatum (The Great Charter of Liberties).6 This document established
several problematic clauses that limited the rights of women. A notable example
was a clause that prevented women from testifying against men, unless the case
involved their husband's death. The document is rife with patriarchal notions of
rights.This is a deliberate consequence of allowing a concentration of power
amongst men in its drafting, in an era where patriarchal notions were normative.
6
John S. Wurts, John, King of England, and Stephen Langton. Magna Carta
Libertatum. 1215
The structural problem concerning constitutions is still relevant today. Consider,
the myriad of practical problems existent in the US Constitution. It is particularly
strange that the second amendment halts the ability for the state to even consider
banning firearms given that there are constitutional democracies which do ban
firearms and those democracies are no lesser of a democracy because of it. So, the
right to bear arms is not a necessary requirement for the existence of a democracy,
yet it is stated in the US constitution as one. This is certainly a consequence of the
interests of the state conventions which deliberated the founding of the
document. Laws pertaining to firearms should likely be civil or common law,
which should then be in line with a nation's constitution. However, the US Bill of
Rights has this very direct and specific law written into its Bill of Rights instead.
This oversight (or deliberate action) has further politicised debate about gun
regulations and mass shootings in the US. So, apart from problematic identity
issues, constitutions can also be nonsensical.
The South African Bill of Rights is lauded for its universality and bravery. It is
often cited as one of the most progressive bills, including controversial promises
and the audacity to push the boundaries of the conceptions of rights. However,
even this constitution should never be idealised to the point where we pretend it
can not be criticised. If anything, the constitutions that actually try to achieve
liberation deserve the greatest measure of disappointment. The South African
constitution was drafted in an era of great compromise, wherein black South
Africans conceded a Western interpretation of labour, property and justice. The
consequence is a document which is ideologically rooted in the West and is
inconsistent with indigenous philosophy and the localities of the common people.
Instead, the philosophy mirrors liberal Western thinkers, such as John Locke and
Thomas Hobbes.
Within Locke's ¨Second Treatise of Civil Government,¨ he writes
And amongst those who are counted the civilized part of mankind, who
have made and multiplied positive laws to determine property, this
original law of nature, for the beginning of property, in what was before
common, still takes place; and by virtue thereof, what fish any one catches
in the ocean, that great and still remaining common of mankind; or what
ambergris any one takes up here, is by the labour that removes it out of
that common state nature left it in, made his property, who takes that
pains about it. 7
In this view, he proclaims that property rights are a natural extension of labour.
Locke believes that all property exists in the ¨common state nature¨ and through
labour, it can be removed from this common to become personal property. As
intuitive as this principle seems, it must be engaged critically. This smokescreen
hides the reality that property is an inherited privilege disconnected from the
working class. In fact, property has almost never been a direct reward for hard
labour, else the workers of the world would have long since gained it. It neglects
reality.
An ever greater issue is presented by the principle itself. How do we determine an
amount of property proportional to work? How do we differentiate and value
work? How much property should the factory worker earn? How much for the
executive? How much for the stock broker? The reality is that white-collar work
is enormously valuable and taking the pains about that grants many of Locke´s
fish, whilst blue collars will starve. This is because our hierarchical societies limit
the number of people who can gain the adequate education for professional
labour and the adequate network and social position for executive work. So, these
forms of work receive greater reward because they are scarce and unskilled
labourers receive low pay because they are vast and plentiful. This basic
application of the laws of supply and demand is well known to the masters. This
is why they insist on the exclusion of the common people from quality or higher
education.
Most importantly, Locke´s fish is only accessible by people whose hands are
invited to draw it out. By creating systems of exclusion, the masters of our
societies curate who achieves property and who does not. Consider an athletic
race of a handful of people. Winning that race is a commendable achievement,
because winning any race is. However, would the same runner win if a several
hundred people were allowed to run -- or if seven billion were allowed to? The
reality is that the wealthy achieve their wealth because the common people are
excluded it from it, not because the wealthy take the pains about it. The common
people are the hardest working people, yet receive the most minimal of reward.
7
John Locke. The Second Treatise of Civil Government. 1689
Another consideration against Locke's conception of property is to question its
necessity. Why must property exist? What is so flawed with allowing it to remain
in the common state? It should be clear that it is impossible for everyone to own
property. Are we then recommending that some own property and others do not?
That is reminiscent of a feudal system where landless workers tenured land in
exchange for reward and landowning nobles received work simply because they
had land. It creates a system where people only work because they do not have
property while people receive wealth simply because they have property. It is an
arbitrary, unjust and unequal reward system. Why not allow property to remain a
common good? We would not claim the road, the railway nor even the streetlight
for ourselves, so why claim the school, the farm and the office? These are all
public goods that are intended to serve the interests of the common people. To
achieve this, they must belong to the common. To Locke, I say, allow the fish to
swim freely in nature and take no pain about it.
So, when we return to constitutions and any document with western property
rights, we should acknowledge the flaws in their principles which undermine the
liberation of common people. Property is perhaps a popular criticism of these
constitutions, but its central flaw is not limited to property.
Constitutions create democratic protection for the privileged and powerful
before attempting to redistribute their privilege. Because it has first granted them
democratic protection, it is then unable to redistribute their privilege. So, a
constitution creates an absurd scenario wherein it wants to liberate the persecuted
but its own provisions prevent it from achieving that equity. This then also
creates additional problems. First, the persecuted are never liberated. Second, the
persecuted become victims of a constitution. This is because it primarily prohibits
them from pursuing their liberation or punishes them when they do. Third, it
serves to divide the persecuted between those who agree with the constitution and
those who do not. Meanwhile, the privileged remain united in their support of
the constitution -- and even ring in some members of the persecuted to defend it
on their behalf. Finally, it creates several categories of persecuted people who are
labelled negatively. These usually exist as four broad labels which divide the
community of persecuted people.
The first label is criminal (or deviant). Often, persecuted people will have to break
laws in the struggle for their liberation. During the #FeesMustFall struggle,
countless South African students were indicted with criminal activity. Apart from
liberation struggles, the persecuted people also need to commit crime to survive.
People in entrenched poverty often turn to organised crime syndicates (who
exploit their vulnerability). This only occurs because their persecution creates a
vulnerability for the syndicate leaders to exploit. Even when they commit crime
outside of a syndicate, they are motivated by a lack of basic and needs. Their
immediate concerns force them to sacrifice their inner goodness and commit evil
to survive. The persecuted are criminal because they are persecuted. This vicious
cycle only results in them receiving more persecution.
The second label is lazy (or entitled). Persecuted people do work hard. In fact,
they are forced to work harder than the privileged because the privileged can
achieve their immediate and material needs or desires without having to work.
The work of the persecuted receives no reward. They are undervalued in kapitalist
economies and never receive enough income to achieve upward socioeconomic
mobility. Their persecution also locks them outside of formal qualification and
education for higher-paid labour. In fact, higher-paid (or skilled) labour is only
higher-paid because of its exclusivity. In any case, their exclusion means regardless
of how hard they work, they remain in poverty. Many of the persecuted will
struggle to even find work in the first place so they will not even be given the
opportunity to work for wages. So, the unemployed and poor will be considered
lazy. In reality, they are not. The material reality is a consequence of the societies
that persecute them and the lottery of birth which unfairly places them in
persecution. When they come to realise this, many of the common people become
hopeless. They understand that working really hard to achieve success is a formula
that fails. Perhaps, a small handful of them will succeed (and how cruel it is that
they must compete against each other). So, they decide to litter the streets idly.
The consequence of this existence is identical to one where they really try. They
still end up idling on the street. The common people that ask for welfare grants
are viewed as entitled. Welfare itself is such little capital in any case that it is
absurd to view asking for such little amounts of money as entitlement or
dependency. More than this, welfare systems are unable to address issues of
structural poverty. They are intended to resolve situational or conjectural
unemployment. So, the common people remain trapped in poverty despite
welfare which creates absurd perceptions that they misspend welfare money or are
not working hard enough. Weirdly, the privileged people are satisfied with
inheritance wealth which is of a great amount and is rarely worked for. They do
not view this as entitlement. Privileged people are also satisfied with wealthy
people who do not work at all. They do not view this as laziness. The weirdest of
all things is privileged people are quick to call upon their property rights. A right
is in its own conception, an entitlement. So, in many ways, they are far more
entitled than the common people.
The third label is privileged. As odd as it seems, many privileged people think that
the persecuted are privileged due to affirmative action or quota systems. Oddly,
the privileged do not compare their own privilege to affirmative action to
compare which system is more beneficial. They pretend the playing field is level to
start with and affirmative action tips the scales. Conversely, affirmative action
does not even do enough to bring the scales closer to equality. They still remain in
the favour of the privileged because a quota is unable to address the structural
context which creates privilege. More than this, affirmative action creates a
division among the persecuted because only a small percentage of the persecuted
benefit from affirmative action. In this instance, that small “elite” could be
considered privileged in relation to other persecuted groups but they are still
generally persecuted.
The fourth label is decent. This is reserved for the member of the persecuted
people who have agreeable political opinions. If they are liberal, kapitalist and
rainbowist, they are viewed as more sensible than other persecuted people.
Perhaps, they are even accepted (to a limited degree) by the privileged.
Frighteningly, they are sometimes used by the privileged to justify their beliefs.
But, despite their views, they remain persecuted and inferior to the privilege
people that they can find common expression with. Their similarities end with
their views and never translate to real equity.
All these labels serve to other and dehumanise the persecuted. The greatest
objective of oppression is to remove one's sense of self and being. This creates the
environment for inferiority and division among the persecuted.
Consider how all this might play out in an analogy of a long-distance marathon
race where only a few privileged people were given the opportunity to race -- or in
the least, were given a significant head start. Later on in the race, the race
organisers realise that some people were barred from running -- or in the least,
were given a significant starting disadvantage. So, the race organiser orders all
participants to stop and stand still wherever they are in the race. The organiser
then creates a new rule book that stresses democratic values of participation,
fairness and accountability. This document creates three significant rules. First, all
people are allowed to participate in the race. Second, no participant can do
anything to disadvantage another participant. Third, no participant can be
allowed to unfairly benefit in the race. The organisers then decide to not apply
these rules retroactively. They only apply from that moment forward in the race.
So, any benefit that the privileged have already received in the race would not be
an infringement of the new rules.
So, all the disadvantaged people, who were previously prohibited from running,
line up at the starting position. The race organiser then decides that all the
privileged athletes who were already far ahead in the race would be allowed to
keep all the distance they had run and continue running from that point. The
organiser then allows the race to continue. All the “liberated” people start
running from the beginning and try their best to advance in the race. They push
themselves to the limits of their abilities, running average speeds even greater than
the privileged athletes. Despite this, they are unable to catch up to privileged
people who had made significant distance in the marathon already.
Frustrated by this, some of new participants decide to cheat to catch up. They
organise bicycles and start cycling to catch up to the privileged runners ahead.
However, this violates the new rules and they are disqualified. They are labeled as
criminals, punished and taken out of the race. They are also barred from ever
participating again. Some of the other new participants -- who are equally
frustrated -- realise that they will never catch up and if they try to cheat to catch
up, they will be disqualified. In this hopeless situation, some of them drop out of
the race. They never achieve any significant distance in the race and because of
that, they are labelled as lazy and entitled. Some of the new participants respond
to this dilemma by colluding with spectators who are further down in the race.
They organise for the spectators to injure the privileged runners later on in the
race. After this happens, an investigation reveals that some of the new runners
injured the privilege runners. These new runners are punished under the new
rules and disqualified from the race. They might also receive even greater
punishment for their crime. Realising the unfairness in all of this, the race
organiser moves the finish line forward for the new runners. The organiser states
that they no longer need to pass the old finish line, but can instead just pass the
one that was brought forward. The privileged runners protest, claiming that is
unfair that the new runners can pass an easier finish line while they have to pass
the more difficult finish line. Some of them are already over the ‘easier’ finish line
and claim that they would have already won the race if they were judged by the
same standards. So, with enormous backlash, the organiser is forced to move the
finish line back to the original point.
All the runners that remain in the race continue to work hard. They are
celebrated by the community of spectators who respect them for not performing
the crimes of the other persecuted runners, for not giving up and for accepting
one standard finish line. Despite how much they are accepted and celebrated, they
finish the marathon far behind the privileged runners. The reality is that they still
started the race far behind. Their tenacity, acceptance of the new rules and
decision to continue running did not make them immune from their persecution.
This race is the reality of our democratic nations. Constitutions are the new rules
which only perpetuate inequality. The power that existed before democracy
continues to exist and it remains protected by our constitutions. Quite simply, the
race organisers should have brought every runner back to the beginning of the
race. They should not have just paused the race to bring new runners to the
beginning and then allow it to continue. That action created many problems
which otherwise would not have been created. The deviant, entitled or
“privileged” common person would not exist. They would not commit crimes,
develop government dependency or rely on quotas. There also would not be
conflict between these persecuted people and the “decent” persecuted people,
who disagree on political approaches to achieve liberation. Obviously, there can
be no disagreement about how to achieve liberation if people are liberated.
Similarly, constitutions have created the same problems. The persecuted are
criminal and dependent because of constitutions. They are perceived as privileged
because constitutions create the perception that the playing field is level. There is
conflict among the persecuted, which constitutions are responsible for.
The worst consequence of privilege protectionism is the competition between the
persecuted that is crafted as a consequence. Using the analogy of the marathon,
the persecuted end up running against each other. They compete for all sorts of
material opportunities from low-skilled jobs to tertiary funding. Crime affects the
persecuted far greater than the privileged because the privileged are largely
inaccessible. So, the persecuted steal from, sell drugs to and kill other persecuted
people. The segregation between the privileged and the persecuted is the clearest
consequence of not making everyone start the race over. Because of this, the
persecuted fight amongst themselves at the back of the race. There is great
conversation about the fact that the majority of perpetrators of crimes against
black people are themselves, black people. People attempt to use this to prove that
white-on-black violence in modern times is not as severe as black-on-black
violence. The mistake they make is not in pointing out the statistical truth, but in
not thinking clearly enough about the structural conditions which motivate those
statistics. The reality is that structural persecution segregates the privileged from
the persecuted. Therefore, the persecuted commit crimes against each other to get
ahead. If there a handful of opportunities to escape structural oppression, then
there are two natural consequences. First, a persecuted person will ensure that
other persecuted people are held down so that they are among the handful that
succeed. Second, a persecuted person will opt into crime, which serves as a greater
guarantee of wealth. For people experiencing structural persecution, crime pays
far more likely and far greater than abiding by systems which are structurally
biased against persecuted people. In great irony, constitutions incentive crime and
disorder rather than solve it.
The common people are in effect, fighting among themselves like slaves inside a
pit while the masters stare from above marvelling at the conditions of conflict
they have inspired. At no point can we take the fight to them. The masters are
gifted with divine privilege protectionism ordained by constitutional document.
So, the common people continue fighting among slaves.
The bottom line remains that constitutions are not drafted by the common
people. The general populace is certainly not consulted on the values written
within it. Crucially, the nature of a constitution is determined by the ideology
and compromises of the drafters. So, the most crucial and fundamental
foundation of all democratic nations is subject to the whims of the its most
powerful members i.e. the masters of our societies. The masters draft the
constitution and certainly, they are unable to draft a document that opposes their
interests. So, the document advances their interests, which are in opposition to
the interests of the common people. As it did in the marathon race, constitutions
protect the privileged. The conclusion is that democracies favour the masters and
allow for the structural disadvantage suffered by the common people.
Furthermore, the primer states that, ¨All human beings are born with inalienable
rights. These human rights empower people to pursue lives of dignity – thus, no
government can bestow them but all governments should protect them.¨ This
certainly clarifies that rights require the activity of governments for them to be
achieved. If a government practices discrimination against a particular group of
people e.g. black people, sex workers, ethnic minorities etc., then those people can
not achieve their rights. They are unable to access them. Although, many civil
movements have fought against these prejudiced governments, the underlying
ideology of identity discrimination, hatred and injustice remains prevalent in our
societies and within their governments. There is no single government in the
world which accepts, represents, treats fairly and equally, and advances the
interests of all identity groups.
So, the natural conclusion is that there are identity groups excluded from the
attainment of rights. How then can we call any country in the world a democracy
when there are people within that state that are meaningfully excluded from
achieving their rights. If the government fails to protect the common people's
rights, then the common people do not have rights. If the common people do not
have rights, then they do not reside in a democracy. If we are to claim our modern
nation-states as democracies, then they should start protecting the rights of all
identities.
ELECTIONS & REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT
While the principle of rights is achieved (supposedly) through constitutions and
government protection, majority rule is achieved through a process of election.
However, to be considered a democratic election, the primer states that elections
should include several freedoms such as the freedom to vote (secretly), contest as a
candidate, receive information and assemble. It also requires an impartial and
sensible electoral system.
Some of these principles are undermined in modern democracy through a skewed
interpretation of representative democracy. Under current governance systems,
people with existent power have exclusive access to candidacy for public office.
People without power are subjected to be regular voters who vote amongst
power-holders. This means that people do not choose their representatives from
amongst the entire population, but instead are forced to choose representatives
from within a small and limited pool of candidates - who are more representative
of privilege. This pool of candidates certainly cannot guarantee representation of
the broad and diverse common people. In fact, these candidates understand that
to attain power, their only necessary goal is to defeat their opposing candidates.
Therefore, politics becomes a game of victories. The successful politician is the
person who wins the race against their opponent and not the person who
represents people. This game of politics creates apathetic political representatives
who are detached from their constituencies and act in their self-interest.
Still, the common people are earnestly convinced that the ballot is an exercise of
their power. In reality, the common people are exploited by political agendas.
They are tools to achieve victory against political opponents. The more votes a
candidate receives, the more likely they are to win the game. So, achieving votes is
a means to the end of victory. It is not a mechanism for receiving accountability
and a mandate from people. Elections produce outcomes based on the elite
candidates, not based on the common people.
The electoral system also centralises power and creates enormous barriers for the
common people to truly rule. The game of politics is difficult with multiple
opponents, so power-holders are incentivised to create mechanisms that limit
contest. Political outsiders are systematically excluded. Importantly, political
candidates that bring all the common people with them are especially targeted
and blocked.
More importantly, the very idea of representation needs to be reformed. A group
of representatives are rarely actually representative of the identity of their
constituents. This means they are unable to interpret and understand issues
through the experiences of those identities. This further means they are less likely
to adopt positions that resonate with the identities they are meant to represent.
Consider legislation on sex work. Sex workers are rarely consulted or represented
about the sort of legislation that is in their best interest. So, progressive sex work
legislation is rarely passed. Even if one representative in a legislative branch of
government was a member of a particular identity group, they would find
themselves powerless from within a painful minority. They are one vote among
hundreds. So, having just a few people represent a particular identity group is
fruitless. The reality that there are multiple unique social identity groups that will
never receive adequate representation in government is a painful mark on our
modern democracies.
Moreover, it is undeniable that a representative is a human being with their own
conceptions of morality and their own philosophy of life. These internal forces
undeniably influence their decision-making. This means their personal
convictions will prevent them from truly representing people, especially in
scenarios where their personal views oppose those of the common people. It is
very often that popular public opinion is entirely disregarded by representative
bodies. Even when the representatives are from the same identity groups as the
common people, their personal motives may influence their policy directives and
decisions in a manner that opposes that identity group. For instance, the South
African government is a black majority government, yet its approach to criminal
justice disproportionately harms people of colour. It is certainly possible for a
black government to create anti-black legislation.
The idea of representation is a myth. Our democracies are ruled by an elite
political minority. They make personal decisions which affect the wellbeing of
entire populations, without earnestly considering the interests of those people.
There is no such thing as representation. It is imagined and lied about.
There are also great attempts to justify the lack of representation. The political
elite claim that the common people are not sufficiently knowledgeable about
governance, economics and policy. There is truth to this, however, the common
people are also not hollow shelves. They do possess some degree of useful
information and a democratic system should necessarily consult them to receive
whatever information they do have. Sometimes, this information is actually
greater than the supposed expertise of representatives. For instance, the
LGBTQIA+ community is very aware of the issues faced by the community and
measures that can solve them. It would be absurd to argue that they do not. These
are not implemented because the personal whims of representatives oppose their
achievement, not because representatives are more knowledgeable.
But more than this, nonprofits, non-governmental organisations and public
benefit organisations have proven to be competent, knowledgeable and truly
representative of the interests of people. They amass great resources to actually
fulfill the function of representatives. These organisations can certainly be
consulted meaningfully to the point where their views, research and solutions are
included in government ideas and plans. Where the common people collectivise in
action, true democratic representation is achieved. This representation should be
transferred into meaningful policy.
An ideal form of representation is not a singular person who wins an election. It is
a community of people gathering through an organisation that produces work
which pursues the community´s interests and achieves their wellbeing. Our
communes should have greater governance power. Only then will representation
exist.
Currently, elections are playhouses for politicians, but democracy does not
require the current conception of representative democracy to exist. In fact, the
current concentration of power and misrepresentation is in opposition to a core
principle of democracy. Our modern democracies need to create measures for the
people to rule. It needs communities of people involved in representing
themselves.
So, I recommend that we delegate more responsibilities to the common people.
We should move closer to direct democracy initiatives, such as referenda. By
doing this, we decentralise governance. Certainly, people cannot make very
technical decisions about budgets and policy (yet) but we certainly can make
many valuable decisions about general policy direction.
For instance, questions such as whether marijuana should be legalised, sex work
should be decriminalised or whether people from majority-muslim countries
should be banned from entering the United States are yes/no questions that we,
the common people, can answer. From there, the government does all the
administrative and technical work required to bring about the necessary changes.
It’s not a fix-all solution, but its enormously better than status quo. In fact, it’s a
step in the right direction – as long as we agree that there should be a
decentralisation of power. It’s time to abandon the illusion of centralised, but
separate governance. We must embrace giving power to the people.
The lack of representation explains why lawmakers in legislative branches of
government do not achieve outcomes in the interest of the common people.
Legislative bodies - parliaments and congresses - serve the powerful. In the US,
this is clearer through the transparency of campaign donations. Candidates who
received great sums of money from particular companies are more likely to vote in
favour of those companies, even when doing so opposes the interests of the
common people. Consider the fact that massive pharmaceutical companies in the
US charge greater prices for the exact same product than nearby Canada.
Lawmakers do not regulate this activity because major pharmaceutical companies
contribute to their political campaigns.
At first glance, it seems the problem is the existence of money within politics. By
allowing companies to fund political campaigns, democracies create lawmakers
who serve those companies. But, the problem is far deeper than this. The only
reason money plays a meaningful role in democracies is because we have designed
an electoral system that requires it. Lawmakers must advertise themselves to
people to convince the common people to support their candidacy. The common
people do not know these individuals, their politics nor their virtues. There is an
information gap that needs to be closed by political candidates. The only way to
achieve this is through extensive campaigning and advertising. But more than
this, because political opponents are also attempting to close this gap through
campaigning and advertising, candidates have to attempt to out-campaign each
other. So, this requires even more campaigning and advertising from each
candidate.
This entire process is very costly. They need to source money from somewhere to
fund this exercise. Companies have the interest to fund candidates, with the
expectation of legislative preference. So, the interests of candidates (who need
money) and the interests of powerful companies (who need preference) align. In
this process, the interests of the common people are not considered. This is a
consequence of how our electoral systems are built. It is a consequence that will
continue until we reform this system. Notably, if communities represented
themselves through community organisations, the problem of money and
misrepresentation is minimised.
Another issue with modern governance is centralisation. This means that
decision-making belongs to an elite, rather than to people. It also means that
different branches of government, which are meant to be seperate end up
colluding.
Democracies intend to abide by the principle of ‘separation of powers.’ It ensures
that governance responsibilities are divided among different branches of
governments and in some complex-convoluted manner, they hold each other to
account. However, the human beings who occupy positions of power within
these branches do (and sometimes must) collude with each other, erasing the
separation altogether.
Immense discussion about the United State’s Supreme Court illustrates this
clearly. The executive branch (The President and their cabinet) appoints Supreme
Court Justices who then make decisions about the powers of the Executive,
including actions the Executive wishes to undertake (Travel Ban for instance).
There’s an obvious incentive by any president to ensure that they appoint people
to the Supreme Court who agree with their ideology and policy.
But surely the founders of the US considered this issue? Their solution is where
the third (and legislative) branch of government (a congress or a parliament) kicks
in. Congress and more specifically, the lower house (the Senate) has to review the
president’s nominees for Supreme Court Justices. This is where the power starts
centralising. Where the president and the majority of the Senate are from the
same political party, their interests align. This means any nominee the president
puts forth is likely to just be accepted by the Senate. Technically speaking,
Senators are independent and they can vote against the President. However,
countries are ruled on collusion, centralisation & incentives – not technicality.
So, what can (and is likely to) happen is a President nominates a judge who will
judge in the president’s favour and Senate will ratify that appointment, regardless
of the conflict of interest. This actually happened recently with the appointment
of Neil Gorsuch to the US Supreme Court.
At this point, people try their best to find evidence that the system is not broken
all the time. Sometimes, Senators vote outside of party bounds. Sometimes, there
is a bona fide separation between different branches of government. Sometimes.
Sometimes. But that is not good enough. We should not base our systems of
governance on the off-chance that it might work or the off-chance that the ‘right
people’ (if that even exists) are in power. Moreover, I suspect that the situation
will only worsen form here. The government of the US might continue shrinking.
Even it does not, there is sufficient cause for concern. Our governance system
must change. The illusion of separation of powers has kept us happily occupied
for long enough. There is no such separation. There is only centralisation.
The United States is an easy example, but modern democracy across the world is
prone to the same centralisation. In South Africa, the executive branch of
government is (for the most part) appointed by the legislative branch from among
members of the legislative branch. The President and their cabinet creates laws,
which are debated and passed in parliament. If a political party has a majority in
parliament, then they will elect all the members of the executive. They are also
likely to pass the laws recommended by the executive. In this instance, the lines
between the executive and the legislative branches blur. In fact, most South
Africans do not even know that there is (supposed to be) a difference between
parliament and cabinet. For most of us, they are one and the same thing.
The judicial branch of government in South Africa enjoys enormous
independence. This is because the Judicial Service Commission – which creates
the shortlist for Constitutional Court Justices – is diverse and decentralised (to a
degree). The constitution ensures that this body has the following 25 members:
“-- the Chief Justice of South Africa, who presides over its meetings;
-- the President of the Supreme Court of Appeal;
-- one Judge President designated by the Judges President;
-- the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development, or his/her
designated alternate;
-- two practicing advocates nominated from within the advocates’
profession;
-- two practicing attorneys nominated from within the attorneys’
profession;
-- one teacher of law, designated by the teachers of law at South African
universities;
-- six members from the National Assembly (lower house of parliament),
including three from opposition parties;
-- four members from the National Council of Provinces (upper house of
parliament); and
-- four more persons designated by the President after consulting the
leaders of all the parties in the National Assembly.”8
The president only directly appoints 4 of the members, while the vast majority
come from different interest groups. For the appointment of Justices, the
president chooses someone from the list supplied by the JSC. Unlike the
appointment system in the United System, the South African system is
decentralised. Such decentralisation has been to benefit of common people and
the integrity of judicial appointments. Moreover, it proves that decentralised
forms of governance produce greater outcomes.
Conclusively, our judiciary remains independent, however it exercises its powers
with great discretion. This means it does not interrupt the collusion between
cabinet and parliament. So, the centralised nature of South Africa’s governance is
maintained. But it is not nearly as bad as the US — at least.
However, it is still bad. The people who built this system – without consulting
the common people – created it this way deliberately. All around the world, when
the executive branch and the legislative branch are the same political party, the
government is centralised. We have, in effect, the centralisation of powers.
Fixing this mess is no easy task and I will not pretend that it is. However, we must
fix this. The problem is not with how we elect the president. In the USA, the
president is elected directly whilst in SA, they are elected by parliament. The
conclusion is the same, though.
It is impossible to separate the two branches of governments when they are
occupied by the same political party (which is common). It is in the DNA of our
democratic system to centralise. So, this issue cannot be directly fixed.
The problem with our current electoral system and representation is structural
and deliberate. The common people must seek the courage to challenge this
8
Constitution of the Republic of South Africa. Chapter 8: “Courts and
Administration of Justice”.
system and the power-holders which maintain and benefit from it. Otherwise, we
should refrain from referring to our modern nation-states as democracies.
RULE OF LAW
The constitution of a country does not only confer human rights, it also
establishes the rule of law. According to the primer, this principle ¨ensures that all
citizens receive equal protection under the law and that their rights are protected
by the legal system.¨ Moreover, it establishes that not even rulers are above the law
and that the criminal justice system (from the police to the courts) should be fair,
equal and impartial. The democratic principle of a ¨rule of law¨ can only be
achieved through the criminal justice system. So, it is this system that we should
investigate.
The justice system refers to several institutions and agencies to respond to
criminality in a society. Justice systems have varying objectives and prioritise their
aims differently, however four standard aims can be considered as: protection of
society, punishment of perpetrators of crimes, rehabilitation of perpetrators of
crimes and deterrence to potential perpetrators of crimes. The core institutions
required in a democratic system are policing services, a judiciary and correctional
facilities. These institutions interact with each other to achieve the
aforementioned goals. Therefore, a justice system and de facto rule of law of a
nation should be scrutinised on the basis of these institutions. It may seem that
the issues present within justice systems are not inherent to democracy. In fact,
often this is the case. The remedy for some issues present in the system can be
found when change our present understanding of democracy.When we gaze
deeper into the works of justice in modern democracies, we will find the
motivation to reform democracy itself in the pursuit of adequate justice.
There is a common perception that national police services are despondent and
forceful. Indeed, several incidents of police brutalisation occur consistently in
several democratic nations.This form of state-sanctioned police violence is
commonly a response to unrest by the common people, but can also be a
normalised treatment against the vulnerable and powerless. The power of the
police is immense. Subjectively, it can be viewed absolutely. When police come to
recognise their power and the ability for them to exercise it without recourse, they
are easily able to abuse it for the cause of vanity. Importantly, this exercise of
power is rarely in offense to rich and powerful people. It is directed
disproportionately against the common people. In these cases, the police can cause
harm without significant accountability or negative consequence.
This creates a few significant differences between the role of the police for the
powerful and for the common people. First, the powerful will easily escape
policing and the enforcement of the rule of law. Laws will exist primarily and
almost solely for the common people. Police are unconcerned about substance
abuse in affluent communities, where the use of various substances is common.
They will, however, concern themselves greatly with the exact same offence in less
wealthy communities. There are illegal activities that privileged people can
commit without recourse. Meanwhile, poorer communities cannot breathe
without experiencing excessive encounters with police services. They must survive
through statistical profiling, seemingly ¨random¨ security checks and a
dehumanising presumption of guilt. When, the powerful are not policed, it means
infringements of law have no recourse. In effect, the powerful become above the
law. Once they then come to recognise their power and the ability for them to
exercise it without recourse, they also exercise it against the common people -- for
the cause of vanity.
This also means, secondly, the police and the powerful collude to systematically
disadvantage the common people. The powerful use the police to rid their
affluent areas of these ¨undesirable¨ people. These areas are heavily securitised and
the police are more than willing to oblige to the complaints of the powerful
against the common people. The police certainly become an extension of the
wealthy and serve their beck and call, rather than the seemingly unbiased laws (if
they are unbiased) which are meant to regulate all people.
Recognise that power will inevitably corrupt even the most moral of institutions.
Thus far, the discourse has elaborated the extent that power concentrates and
perpetuates in modern democracy. It is the existence of this extensive power
which will influence the justice system. Efforts to resolve these systems without
removing the power that influences them will serve to only marginally improve
these systems at best. At worst, these efforts will waste resources and inspire a
hopelessness due to the inability for the justice system to change.
People will continually grow despondent of institutions of justice. Already,
modern democracies have developed negative sentiments against police, courts
and prisons. The common people develop frustration against this system. Since
the police regularly interact directly with people, they become recipients of this
frustration. The observed conclusion is conflict between police and the common
people. Certainly, some of the greatest injustices of modern democracies are
instances of police brutalisation. This develops primarily from the nature of
modern democracies.
In South African universities, the absurd response to political protest during the
#FeesMustFall activity was intense campus militarisation. The South African
Police Services and private security companies, including paramilitary services
were summoned.
MILITANT RESPONSE TO YOUTH PROTESTS
The militarisation of academic spaces in response to student protest is a cause for
concern. Often, it does not end well. Students, whether protesting or not, get
injured by rubber bullets, get violently handled during arrest and become
traumatised by accounts of aggressive commotion. Even without escalation from
protesting students, the fact that university spaces transform into police states
should worry anyone.
The October 2017 developments at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology
(CPUT), the University of the Free State (UFS) and the University of Cape Town
(UCT) indicated how balaclava policing fails to resolve student protests. Any
success it does deliver is a result of violent policing and limitation of freedoms.
Over nearly two months, the decay of CPUT was catalysed by private security
presence. Protesters then escalated to the use of petrol bombs again. Instead of
reducing the threat, heavy security intensified it.
Through intense security, the university reopened - but at the cost of some
freedoms. The policing was comparable to apartheid state policing. The
university instituted residence curfews and blocked visitation. Security patrolled
the university and black students experience great scrutiny. Under these
circumstances, students were heavily restricted and monitored. CPUT is a case
study in the demerits of private policing, especially considering the financial costs.
Another prominent example is UFS.
20 October was marked by violence at the Bloemfontein campus, caused largely
by private security firm, Mafoko Security. Toward the end of the afternoon,
police fired stun grenades to disperse students. While students were dispersing,
Mafoko fired rubber bullets directly toward students. Afterward, they hunted
university grounds for dispersing students.
At two male residences, they shot directly at non-protesting residents and
damaged the residence property. The prime of one of these two residences went
to speak to them and was pepper-sprayed, despite no connection to the protests.
The police and Mafoko entered the residence in a raid to search for protesting
students. They also conducted raids at the Steve Biko House earlier that day.
Similarly, residence raids were conducted at CPUT. Other parallels include UFS
residences being instructed to block visitors and security conducting patrols on 21
October. These limitations have been diluted at UFS but are still ongoing. For
CPUT, this ¨martial law¨ campus lasted weeks.
For the last two weeks of October, the security presence at the UFS QwaQwa
campus was more militarised. Dogs accompanied security and several students
were physically assaulted to the point of visible swelling - some were hospitalised.
An image of a student bleeding around their ear first started circulating followed
by more images depicting rubber bullet wounds on students. Worsening matters,
were accounts of the use of live ammunition which hospitalised two students. In
the worst of cases, a student from the QwaQwa campus sustained an eye injury,
has visited the hospital numerous times and was fighting vigorously for his
eyesight.
The similarities between UFS and CPUT reveal that the two universities were
under the misconception that increased security presences will resolve the student
protest. To achieve their police states, both universities virtually locked students
in residences, denied them visitors, condoned aggressive force against them and
monitored students. This is comparable to the restriction of freedoms under
martial law.
Often, victims of the private security companies were not even protesting
students. I recall the account of a few students involved in some brutalising
incidents relaying the incidents of the October protests at the university. A
student accounts that she was shot nine times in the back by Mafoko´s rubber
bullets. At the time, she and a friend were en route to meeting a friend at the
Callie Human building. ¨I heard the police officers announcing that the students
should disperse,¨ she states. ¨Moments after that, I heard gunshots, cries of
innocent souls and students running towards Callie Human. One girl fell in front
of my feet and I couldn't move. I realised my friend was not next to me and when
I saw my friend running toward the Calle Human, I also decided to run. I found
my friend hiding under the stairs screaming for my name. While there, I realised I
had been shot several times. The Mafoko came into Callie Human and shouted
´Ba Kae?´ (where are they?).¨
Another student, involved in the protest, gave a similar account. ¨I felt sparks of
stun grenades next to my foot. We were moving to the bridge. We were just
singing. As we turned to move, I heard an explosion. All I saw was dust. Next
thing, I was calling for help. My friend pulled me up to help me run. I got a panic
attack and was on the verge of crying, My friend helped me run¨ she stated.
Mafoko conducted raids, intimidated people taking recordings, threatened to
shoot them and forced compliance. A near-arrested student reveals that Mafoko
commanded him and a group of other students to lower their heads during the
attempted arrest.
It is worrying that both universities also have weak relationships with their
private security. At CPUT, the university allowed the activity of unregistered
security. They further claim staff verification is the security's company´s problem.
At UFS, the university´s Rector was unaware of the terms of the contract between
the university and Mafoko Security. Universities gave their private security carte
blanche which created chaos and harm against students.
To justify their police state, UFS branded student protesters as ´criminals.´ The
UFS Rector reportedly warned that the management would not tolerate any
criminal behaviour and declared that disruptive behaviour of students would not
be tolerated. Former Minister of Higher Education and Training, Blade
Nzimande, referred to the CPUT protesters as “a tiny band of people who
harbour criminal intentions”. This characterisation of students as criminal
miscreants is necessary to rationalise stun grenades, rubber bullets, tear gas and
generally aggressive tactic.
But, the violence of the men in balaclavas is tough to justify. UFS recognised the
wrongdoings of Mafoko Security and cancelled their contract with the security
service. They also instituted an investigative panel into the incident. But despite
such actions, it was clear the immense power discrepancies between students and
their management create the means for abuse through police services.
CPUT and UFS effectively militarised their universities. However, this exercise is
ineffective, expensive and can easily become illegitimate. If such intense
apartheid-like policing continues during any period of protest, students will
certainly fear simply walking within campus and potentially be associated with
the protest. They will fear being arrested or shot at. A great fallout of a police
state is everyone becomes afraid - not just the intended targets. It goes without
saying that security that creates fear is not security at all.
This narrative of campus militarisation is not unique to universities. The police
are violent without cause toward the common people in their communities. They
see the common people as guilty criminals prior to any offence. They abuse the
most vulnerable people, such as sex workers and substance users. These people are
only vulnerable because their activity is senselessly criminalised.
The South African tragedy of Marikana remains a mark on the claim of
democracy. In August 2015, 34 miners were shot down by the South African
Police Services, with little recourse. Along with the case of Andries Tatane, they
have been the most high-profile instances of police brutality. However, the
occurrence of police abuse is frequent and mostly unrecorded. It is structural,
which explains its existence and explains why current approached to solve the
issue are ineffective. The problem is inherent to the nature of our democracies.
THE COURTS AND PRISONS
weaponising fear against one's own people
The conversation on courts is rather extensive and requires more thought than
this discourse will present. To introduce the issues with court systems, consider
the following questions: If the laws of the past are unjust, how do we know the
current laws are just? Will people in the future, even the immediate future change
our laws? How fair is criminalising certain illegal behaviour when we believe such
behaviour should be legal? Would persecuted people have committed certain
crimes if they were not unfairly persecuted? Are the privileged guilty of
benefitting from their privilege and how should we respond to this guilt? Does it
seem just that stealing a loaf of bread had greater consequences than the crimes of
apartheid? Why are the majority of criminals members of persecuted groups and
is it related to their persecution? Should we not be preventing crime (by solving
persecution) instead of just addressing it post-incident? Even if we answered these
questions, can we change the criminal justice system?
Recognise that privileged people need crime to exist for their bigotry to seem true.
They keep their power by claiming that the persecuted do not deserve it due to
their criminality. Trump and other Conservatives refer to the MS-13 gang to
justify tough immigration laws. They need crime, so they won't solve it.
A world with significantly lower threat of crime is a world with less
fear-mongering. People that wish to maintain power have no realistic means to
assert and maintain their power when populations live without fear. There is no
justification for mass incarceration, disenfranchisement, mass deportation,
intense immigration barriers, low levels of wealth redistribution and all the
different forms of legislation which empowers the masters. They need
populations to be afraid. They need a domestic enemy. They need criminality and
the perception of imminent danger. So, there is no incentive to actually address
the root socioeconomic causes of crime. If persecuted communities were liberated,
all communities -- including privileged communities -- would experience lower
levels of crime.
If the privileged person wants to be safer and experience less crime, they should
support wealth distribution. If not, the privileged must relegate their lives to
watching over their shoulders, isolating and gating themselves, building high
walls, overspending on partially effective surveillance and security systems and
living in great, terrifying fear. As the film, In Time, phrases it, “the poor die and
the rich don't live.” This is the reality that the world has been subjected to. We
have been given the choice to prevent crime from occurring. Instead, we choose to
live in fear.
Access to the courts raises another concern. With immense litigation costs, NGOs
have forked out millions of rand in suits against government agencies, companies
and other groups which facilitate injustice against the common people. In
communities, where none exist or where NGOs are not well-financed, there is
inadequate access to justice. Certainly, progressive legislation that forces law firms
to conduct pro bono work and the various fee-free legal assistance options have
improved their access to courts, however, it remains unreasonably difficult for the
common people to advance their cause through legal systems. There is no reform
that could ultimately improve access dramatically. The cost of the courtroom is an
innate disadvantage of the judiciary.
The alternative to recourse should be pursued -- prevention. If our societies
pursued power-sharing and the liberation of the common people, the need to
pursue recourse would reduce. In the first place, recourse is necessary because our
societies have not changed. We may spend an eternity attempting to reform a
justice system that has inherent exclusivity written into its essence.
ECONOMIC DECENTRALISATION
Thus far, the discourse has focused primarily on the centralisation of various
institutions of governance. However, power extends past these institutions. In
fact, the empowerment of these institutions themselves requires strong links to
economic power. Consider that the individuals who are more likely to become
judges in courts of high-ranking politicians in political parties are members of a
nation’s economic elite. If not, there is a great probability that their power relies
on a strong and charitable connection to members of the economic elite. In this
reality, these actors maintain present social systems and unequal distribution of
power. In some ways, many of these people have a consciousness that is attached
to the economic elite and are unable to harm them. Even if not, they are bound by
the realisation that their disobeyance of economic power has riveting
consequences for the maintenance of their position of power.
The distribution of political power under these circumstances is challenging. The
distribution of economic power itself is even more challenging. Predictably, rash
attempts to redistribute economic power creates unintended consequences.
Famously, attempts to engineer wealth redistribution and land reform in
Zimbabwe created economic upheaval and catastrophe. The issue, I believe, is not
in the attempt to redistribute wealth, but rather in attempting redistribution
without also investing in inclusive growth.
African economies currently rely on narrow production incentives. This means
that resources are only adequately produced if conditions meet the incentives of
the economic elite. The common people are largely incapacitated and thus unable
to provide similar production and economic growth in the status quo. This is a
deliberate consequence of the interests of economic power and the persecution of
the common people. It works to the advantage of power-holders that only they
are able to pull the levers and turn the cogs of a nation’s economy. They ensure
that all the common people must rely on them for sustenance. This belief
motivates opinions in South Africa that white people are necessary for the
nation’s development and particularly, agricultural output. The notion that
Africans need the economic elite for development is as old as colonialism itself.
Currently, the people that make this claim aren’t necessarily incorrect, but they
use the notion to conclude that Africans can never successfully maintain their
economies. Currently, the common people are so greatly incapacitated that they
rely on the economic elite for the sustenance of their nation’s economies.
Understand that this is a direct consequence of the exclusion of the common
people from education, economic capital and the development of various other
capabilities. In economic terms, since there has been little investment in the
capacities and wellbeing of the common people, they are limited in their ability to
provide returns.
The economic elite and their supporters use this reality to justify the necessity of
an economic elite. However, the situation does not mean that the economic elite
are inherently necessary -- only that they have made the common people
dependent. Realistically, it is certainly possible for the common people to author
their own economies. There just exists a requisite that the dependency on the
economic elite must be reversed. This requires governments to invest in their
people and improve their capabilities. This must occur simultaneously, if not
before, wealth redistribution and power decentralisation.
Currently, this is not the exercise that many developing nations commit
themselves to. The failure of Zimbabwe illustrates why such is a task is certainly
necessary and why governments need to start investing in their people. Instead,
the governments of developing nations continue to collude with economic
powers to create situations that increase dependency on those economic powers.
Consider a developing country that allocates a significant amount of its national
expenditure to debt servicing and continues to borrow from financial institutions
and investors to finance budget deficits. The country finds itself in a cycle of
borrowing and repayment. The borrowing might also be packaged with harmful
conditions. Painfully, it may not even witness significant levels of growth which
justify the activity. The greatest winner of these debt cycles are the economic elite,
either as personal investors or through various financial institutions.
Developing nations, especially in Africa, oversee precarious national budgets that
are overburdened by the needs of a formerly colonised people. Regardless of
expertise and leadership, it is a situation that cannot be navigated independently.
Stemming from colonialism, these countries have not developed adequate
comparative advantage in the global trading sphere. They are prone to
exploitation by multinational companies who are adept at providing goods to
local populations for cheaper than what local producers can provide due to the
MNCs benefiting from the economy of scale. Local production is inhibited, the
country's Gross Domestic Product grows slowly -- if it grows at all -- and the
strength of the country's economy is weak. Moreover, the people remain trapped
in poverty because wage-labour relations are controlled by corporations. This
occurs because the corporations become indispensable and craft corrupted
relations with the state. If they leave, then so will a large part of employed labour
and the production of the basic needs required to sustain the population. The
corporations then benefit from Africa's resource wealth at the expense of the
continent´s people. They reap massive economic gain, while the people continue
to suffer.
Basically, Africa has reduced capacity and resilience, due in part to the colonialism
of the Global West. An enriched West has made Africa dependent and continues
to engineer its persecution. This is often described as neo-colonialism.
With a weak economy, a poverty-ridden population and underdeveloped social
services, Africans suffer from an array of collective social issues, including poor
health, illiteracy, high mortality rates, mass unemployment and widespread
malnutrition. The country's government is tasked with curbing these social ills.
The only way to accomplish this is to fund social programmes and develop relief
institutions. This requires enormous capital. The government simply does not
receive adequate tax revenue from its people to fund these programmes and
institutions.
To make matters worse, African governments are largely corruptible. This is
because political power requires economic power. So economic elites ascend to
political power. They possess little interest in the nation's poor citizens and find
no qualm in self-enrichment. Also, African populations are largely
underdeveloped, illiterate and religious. So, they are less likely to be aware of the
corrupt inadequacies of their government or have the political will to revolt
against it. More importantly, the great enemy of the West has created the illusion
that all Africans are unified in their opposition to the West. In truth, a slim
minority of Africans -- crucially, the economic elite -- are friendly toward the
West. From their perspective, they can attain greater self-enrichment by
associating with economic powers.
This division is not unknown to the African continent. Horrifyingly, it was
Africans that searched and raided villages to seek African slaves. It was an African
elite who were, sometimes, paid large sums of money by Western colonisers for
pieces of land. It is a present-day African elite who benefit, along with the West,
from Africa's mineral resources. The false sense of unity in opposition to the West
inhibits the ability for Africans to view figures in government as potentially
harmful.
The continent finds itself in a horrible and circular mess with no independent
way out. Contemporarily, what African governments are forced to do is borrow
money from western financial institutions and investors to finance the country's
deficit. The rationale is that large-scale infrastructure could be developed and
social programmes could be funded. The hope is that if Africans had roads and
schools, they would use them to advance their standard of living and therefore
become less dependent on the government. However, not only has this exercise
failed, it has created large amounts of debt for African countries. The need to
repay this debt is inhibiting the country´s budgets and abilities to spend on
still-needed social programmes. There needs to be a stronger solution to the mess
Africa finds itself in. Africa needs to invest in the common people.
The core of the problem certainly has roots in the history of slavery and
colonialism, which has greatly mauled African prosperity, however, present-day
African governments have very little intention to eradicate elite economic power.
This is because they are self-enriched by these economic powers. If the continent
is to overcome its history, it must cease to rely on an economic elite who have very
little interest to ensure liberation. Africans should seek the political and economic
power themselves.
Three African nations (Nigeria, Egypt and South Africa) lie in a golden
opportunity to pave the way for the continent´s development by making a
strategic decision to both redistribute the wealth of their nation and invest in
inclusive growth. By 2016 estimates, each of these nations were among the 40
highest GDP in the world. According to the United Nations, Nigeria is 27th,
South Africa is 32nd and Egypt is 39th.9
Redistribution of wealth and power is part of the solution. Consider Nigeria
where oil profits primarily benefit the elite. Redistribution of oil profits to the
wider population could lead to greater collective prosperity. However, in reality,
redistribution of the existing wealth in these nations is insufficient. When
considering GDP per capita, these three African nations rank in the bottom-half
of the world. According to 2017 predictions by the International Monetary Fund,
South Africa is 94th, Egypt is 125th and Nigeria is 139th. These countries do
need rigorous redistribution, but they also need greater production. They require
inclusive growth.
If African economies concentrate on investing in the common people at the same
time as redistributing wealth, they can ensure that they truly liberate the
continent from the horrors of their past and the present horrors of the economic
9
United Nations Statistics Division. 2017.
elite. It is not enough to call for wealth redistribution. We must also ensure
inclusive growth. They are twin-necessities.
WEALTH REDISTRIBUTION
Eight people have the same amount of wealth as 50% of the world’s population.10
Unsettling. This is not an accidental circumstance of a fair economic system. The
common aphorism, “"The rich get richer and the poor get poorer” is the twin to
Smith’s vile maxim. For many, wealth inequality is a moral injustice. It is achieved
by undervaluing the work of the common people who produce the wealth in the
first place. Often, it is achieved through the violation of human rights, the
insubordination of workers and their outright exploitation. Historically, slavery
and colonialism were great drivers of wealth for western nations and present-day
power holders. Contemporarily, the persecution of the common people has not
ended. It has shifted to a legal oppression of the working class. However, there
exists an even greater motivation for the redistribution of wealth. Even if the
world did not witness a tragic history of inhuman wealth accumulation and
present systems of labour and wealth generation were fair, there still exists a
massive problem with the existence of wealth itself.
Wealth inhibits a fair distribution of power. Capital wealth is power. This means
there can be no redistribution of power without a redistribution of wealth. There
is a great myth that fiscal or monetary measures are distinct from social or
political measures. In reality, they are inextricably linked. The realisation of
socio-political rights and liberation can only follow after the redistribution of
power.
So, we must concern ourselves with creating equitable economic systems. If we are
to achieve equity and justice in our societies, then no one should have the
opportunity to amass wealth because the instance they amass wealth, they amass
power. The moment they amass power, persecution will follow. The great triple
problem of poverty, unemployment and inequality must be solved
simultaneously. We must recognise that these three issues are not purely
economic issues. They are issues of power, socio-political interaction and
deliberate structural configuration. Therefore, we should approach economic
10
Deborah Hardoon. An economy for the 99%. 2017.
issues holistically. The solutions to economic problems must consider ideal
socio-political interactions. Moreover, it means we will never be equal as long as
wealth exists. If any of us view ourselves as supporters of equality, we must reject
wealth.
This can be easily understood if we think of wealth differently. Wealth only exists
because the wealthy have significantly more than the less wealthy. Wealth is not
an absolute amount of currency, but rather a comparison. Consider that if
everyone in the world has 1 million units of currency simultaneously, no one
would be wealthy. The cost of goods would still correlate with market forces, but
no one would be considered wealthy. So, wealth is not the property of having a
million units of a currency. Currently, having a million units of a currency makes
someone wealthy because most of the world has far much less than a million
units. What occurs is having much more money than others grants someone
greater power and capacity. This is what wealth truly means. Wealth is a form of
power and power exists for elite when the common people do not have the
abilities to achieve what the elite can achieve. There is nothing morally
reprehensible with having a million units of currency, however, there is a great
moral issue with having wealth and possessing power as a result. Our systems of
living maintain their morality be equalling power, which requires equalling
wealth. Often, there is a belief that ‘equality of opportunity’ is what we should
strive for instead of ‘equality of outcome.’ The issue with this thinking is first,
equality of opportunity is dependent on pre-existing equality of outcome. This
means that outcomes in the past influence opportunities in the present and
future. There can be no equality of opportunity without equality of outcome.
Secondly, any reality where people are grossly unequal should be considered
morally corrupt. So, we should correct any disproportionate outcomes where they
exist. If we do not, we forfeit the claim to be concerned with equality.
A grand solution to this moral dilemma is active wealth redistribution and
measures to prevent the development of wealth. A country’s economic system
should enforce high wages for its labourers. In this circumstance, wealth
generation is prevented because wealth is preventatively with workers.
Decentralisation of wealth also decreases dependency on governments for
economic prosperity. The governments of developing nations are incapable of
wholly raising their people out of conditions of poverty, sustain employment and
economic growth. The South African government spends roughly 12% of the
national budget annually on debt-servicing and it is the fastest growing
expenditure item (An average growth rate of 10.5%).11 This means that they
increase the debt-servicing proportion of the budget each year and by the largest
rate. Listening to past budget speeches, one can only become familiar with the
term ¨fiscal consolidation¨. The SA government's spending is capped, even
though tax revenue rises. This is for the sole purpose of debt-servicing. For every
R1 collected in tax, 12c is diverted to service debt. The rationale behind this is to
keep credit ratings high, show investors that the country is able to repay its debt
and thus encourage increased investment, especially from the international
sphere. Debt-servicing also hopes to create an environment where the government
can borrow more to meet fiscal shortfalls or if a crisis emerges sometime in the
future. Essentially, the government services debt to be able to create more debt.
The recent borrowing trend has become worrying. In 2009, 86.2% of the South
African government domestic bonds were owned by residents of South Africa,
primarily pension funds which contributed 40% of bond ownership. In 2014,
only 64% of the government was owned by residents meaning over a third (36%)
of these bonds were owned by non-residents.12 This is a worrying trend because
non-residents are detached from the geopolitical environment and less
influenceable and dependent than residents. It also harkens that the SA
government is virtually allowing the sale of our nation. But, fundamentally, it
explores the harsh reality that most South Africans are unable to invest in this
nation. The trend toward foreign investment occurs because South African
investors will not or cannot invest as greatly.
South Africa has the 21st strongest pension fund in the world, the Government
Employees Pension Fund, with totals assets of R1,5 Billion. South African private
financial institutions are also supposedly strong. By borrowing from these
investment pools, our government is able to invest diversely in the nation’s
infrastructure and fund social services. This system intends to economically
powerful. However, with a great income inequality, regular South Africans are far
removed from the ability to invest in the country and its financial institutions.
They are unable to play any role in our nation-building. This beckons the harsh
dependency on non-residents.
11
South African National Treasury. Budget Review. 2018.
12
South African National Treasury.
Despite seemingly progressive economic policy, three people in South Africa
possess the same wealth as fifty percent of the population and South Africa's
richest one percent owns 42 percent of the country’s total wealth.13 This can’t be
corrected easily by any government, unless they pursue intense radical economic
policy. But, attempting to pursue radical policy from government-level has
created devastating consequences historically. 20th century government-centered
socialism worsened the living conditions of all people, rather than improving
them. The lesson should have been readily learned. Centralised solutions to the
issues plaguing the common people are ineffective.
One certainty remains that the current system cannot continue. Apart from the
economic devastation experienced by the common people, it is morally
unconscionable to consider that historical oppressors maintain power in the
present. Back in 1987, Thomas Sankara famously delivered his disapproval of
debt-servicing to non-residents in a speech to the OAU that is worth reading. In
it, he explains that the lenders do not need the money to survive but Africans will
die without it.
¨We believe analysis of the debt should begin with its roots. The roots of the
debt go back to the beginning of colonialism. Those who lent us the money
were those who colonized us. They were the same people who ran our states
and our economies. It was the colonizers who put Africa into debt to the
financiers—their brothers and cousins. This debt has nothing to do with
us. That’s why we cannot pay for it.
The debt is another form of neo-colonialism, one in which the colonialists
have transformed themselves into technical assistants. Actually, it would
be more accurate to say technical assassins. They’re the ones who advised us
on sources of financing, on underwriters of loans. As if there were men
whose loans are enough to create development in other people’s countries.
These underwriters were recommended to us, suggested to us. They gave us
enticing financial documents and presentations. We took on loans of fifty
years, sixty years, and even longer. That is, we were led to commit our
peoples for fifty years and more.
13
Katy Wright. Starting with People: A human economy approach to inclusive
growth in Africa. 2017.
The debt in its present form is a cleverly organized re-conquest of Africa
under which our growth and development are regulated by stages and
norms totally alien to us. It is a re-conquest that turns each of us into a
financial slave—or just plain slave—of those who had the opportunity, the
craftiness, the deceitfulness to invest funds in our countries that we are
obliged to repay. Some tell us to pay the debt. This is not a moral question.
Paying or not paying is not a question of so-called honour at all.
Mr. President:
We listened and applauded to the prime minister of Norway when she
spoke right here. She said, and she’s a European, that the debt as a whole
cannot be repaid. The debt cannot be repaid, first of all, because, if we
don’t pay, the lenders won’t die. Of that you can be sure. On the other
hand, if we do pay, we are the ones who will die. Of that you can be
equally sure. Those who led us into debt were gambling, as if they were in
a casino. As long as they were winning, there was no problem. Now that
they’re losing their bets, they demand repayment. There is talk of a crisis.
No, Mr. President. They gambled. They lost. Those are the rules of the
game. Life goes on.
We cannot repay the debt because we have nothing to pay it with. We
cannot repay the debt because, on the contrary, the others owe us something
that the greatest riches can never repay—a debt of blood. It is our blood
that was shed.¨
So, the South African government finds itself in the unfortunate situation where
it must rely on former oppressors to finance its deficit, only to then have to repay
these oppressors, despite them not needing the money.
The solution, unfortunately, can not be as simple as writing off all debt. Financial
institutions and pension funds hold the money of citizens, of workers and
taxpayers. To refuse to service that debt means to jeopardise the money of regular
South Africans. So, the debt to residents of South Africa needs to be repaid. So,
debt accumulation presents an immense challenge to the ability of governments
to assist their people. This challenge is not unique to developing nations. Strong
economies around the world rely in debt accumulation. Sometimes, this can have
devastating effects when investors fear that countries cannot adequately finance
their debt (e.g. Greek financial crisis).
The debt to non-residents is also a question of ethics. Should we repay former
colonisers? Do they even need the money? They are responsible for creating the
conditions that required the government to borrow. Moreover, they continue to
benefit from their colonial systems by using the wealth they accumulated through
colonialism to finance former colonies. Many would argue that colonising
nations, their financial institutions and investors should write off debt from
colonised nations. However, that would remove their incentive to invest further.
This removes the ability for the developing nations to fill funding gaps in their
fiscus. So, solely writing off debt can have long-term harms.
To solve this, many further argue that debt forgiveness should be coupled with
reparations. From an ethical point of view, it seems a just decision to make.
However, it is a decision that the developing world struggles to ensure. An
African country can create a domestic bill that compels corporations, including
the multinationals of the West to forgive debt. It could also further outright
refuse to pay back debt to non-residents. These decision could be met with great
hostility. Even in a situation where African nations jointly initiated this behaviour
and created conditions where it would be difficult for the West to justify punitive
actions against the entire continent (as those would be reminiscent of the colonial
era), such an action still relies on the sympathies of western nations. So, in some
ways, Africa cannot force an agenda of debt forgiveness, as Sankara advocated to
the OAU.
African nations are simply unable to force the paying of reparation. International
financial institutions have no incentive to support such an initiative and the sole
enforcement power, the United Nations Security Council, is controlled in part by
major Western nations with their veto votes. Surely, a Trump-led United States
would veto any attempt to create colonial reparations. So, although possible,
collectivising to pressure debt forgiveness would be more detrimental than
beneficial. So, government borrowing and debt-servicing is unfortunately
unavoidable and a country, like South Africa, might as well service debt extremely
well to incentivise more investment.
This is the limitation of government power. Nigeria, for instance, ran a budget
deficit that was 31% of its national expenditure in 2017. Moreover, 22,75% of the
government's expenditure was directed toward debt financing. The alternative to
our feeble governments is to pursue liberation through wealth decentralisation.
Instead of a government holding the responsibility to respond to the ills of
kapitalism, the common people should rise up against this oppressive system to
ensure a fair distribution of wealth and resource. Governments can never provide
economic liberation. Either, these governments do not wish to pursue radical
economic policy or they are penalised when they attempt. The similar
consequence is the sustained persecution of people.
As Marx wrote, “the workers of the world have nothing but their chains to lose.”
If the common people wish for equality, fair economic conditions and a generally
better world, they must be prepared to create these socio-economic ecosystems
themselves. The common adage rings true: we are the ones we have been waiting
for.
CAPACITY WITH DECENTRALISATION
As alluded in the brief section on economic decentralisation, capacity must be
created with decentralisation. This applies similarly to decentralisation of political
and social institutions. For example, if we want the common people to take direct
democratic decisions through referenda, there should also be sufficient civic
education about the nature of referenda and the consequences of those actions. If
the common people take decisions irrationally, the consequences will be
devastating for all, including the common people. For some, this is the reason they
argue decentralisation is dangerous. Instead, this should be the reason why they
argue for capacity with decentralisation.
It is foolish to not take these concerns earnestly. Often, the immediate responses is
to brush off claims that the common people presently lack sufficient capacity.
People say things along the lines of, “How dare you say that the people aren’t
educated enough to make decisions. Are you saying black people are stupid?” or
“How dare you say that black people can’t farm?” The primary issue with this
response is twofold.
First, it attempts to make one seem like an antagonist to the prosperity of the
common people. Certainly, some people actually are against their liberation,
however, not all people that make the capacity argument are against
redistribution of wealth or decentralisation of power. The response pretends that
anyone who says the phrase “the common people are uneducated” means “the
common people should not be given power.” In truth, that conclusion does not
even necessarily follow from the premise. The truer conclusion would be “the
common people must be given education and power, not just power.” For me, it
seems that the phrase “the common people are uneducated” is obviously followed
by, “so let’s open the doors of learning.” There is no need to assume that people
making the capacity argument are all problematic. Perhaps, some are. But, it
depends on the conclusion that person is trying to reach. For me, the conclusion is
to give the common people both capacity and power. Others may try to use the
argument to deny the common people both. As I have shown, that is an obviously
absurd conclusion.
The second problem with the response is it fails to actually engage. By responding
with, “so are you saying that…” does not engage with whether the statement is
true or false. If the statement is true, us attempting to problematise the person
making the statement does not make it any less true. This is a problem because it
means we cease to engage in realities, but rather spend out time trying to make
people seem problematic. Even if they are problematic, us pointing out to the
world is not going to liberate anyone. The world seems to be indifferent to
whether people have conservative views. At best, we just stagnate ourselves and
waste our breath. Instead, we could divert our efforts to creating solutions to the
capacity problem.
Often, conservative-thinking people are not wrong when they state facts. The
issue is they miscontextualise those facts and use them to advance a problematic
agenda. We need to actually recontextualise those facts and fight the agenda itself
if we want to progress. Most importantly, we need to discover what situations
created those facts and fix that situation. If conservatives argue that
black-on-black crime is higher than white-on-black crime, they are speaking fact.
However, they use that fact to claim that white-on-black crime is not a big
problem. Obviously, their agenda is skewed. In response to this, it is not helpful
to just say, “so are you saying it’s okay for white police officers to shoot black
teenagers?” Sure, the person is being problematic. But they’re also pushing an
agenda. We need to actually defeat that agenda. A strong response would be that
most crime is usually committed between people who know each other. Most
assailants of homicide against white people are white, just like most assailants of
homicide of crime against black people are black. White-on-white crime is
effectively just as much of a phenomenon as black-on-black crime. The
conservatives who make the argument deliberately exclude this reality. However,
when it comes to indiscriminate policing of black communities, the context is
certainly racial.
Importantly, people with power will try -- through any means -- to discredit the
common people and their identity. It is our responsibility to both protect the
identity of the common people and unhinge the faulty reasoning of the
power-holders and any of their supporters. If we do not, stigmas about the
common people based on faulty logic and assertion will continue to spread. If this
happens, the power-holders are reinforced, because their power is justified by
social stigma. Moreover, the common people might even begin to believe of
themselves as inadequate. Steve Biko writes that the “The most potent weapon in
the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”14 The minds of the
oppressed are delivered through social stigmas that are authored by the
power-holders and their supporters. To defend against this, we must be prepared
to unhinge those stigmas.
Recognising that the common people do not currently possess capacity for the
powers we wish to share with them is not necessarily a conservative or
problematic view. It is simply recognising the consequences of oppression.
Certainly, recognising that oppression has devastating and long-lasting
consequences is exactly what positions us on the left. We must decentralise power
and we must give the common people the necessary positive rights, resources and
assistances to develop their capabilities.
MYTH OF DEMOCRACY
Democracy is a great myth. We must look through this illusion if we are to
achieve liberation. The common people have never ruled, but we can reform
democracy, and create a system where the common people rule. We must have
14
Steve Biko. I Write What I Like. 1978.
rights in person, not just on paper. We must represent ourselves, not give all
power to a political elite with little interest in representation. We must
decentralise and redistribute all forms of power, including wealth. We must
review the underlying ideology of our society's rules and the biases within our
systems of governance.
Optic power is a great danger to liberation. It presents a great injustice to the
common people whilst claiming to have unshackled their chains. This is similar to
what Roman chieftain Calgacus observed during the first century Roman empire.
In one translated version of a speech attributed to him by Roman historian
Tacitus, he stated, “They plunder, they slaughter, and they steal: this they falsely
name Empire, and where they make a wasteland, they call it peace.”15
This is the reality of optic power in modern times. We have made the common
people vulnerable, weak and feeble but we call that power.
15
Tacitus. Agricola. AD 98.
PART II: LEFTCULTURE
Abandon the centre; revise the left.
Aligning with the centre hurts the struggle for true progress. Also, the left needs to
collectivise differently.
TRANSFORMATION OVER UNITY
The world is divided by opinion, ideology and belief. Worldviews contradict,
conflict and often produce persecution. It is challenging to imagine a single world
connected by a unified identity. Currently, the world is dominated by the power
of privileged groups. They have created our various social systems and their power
informs how we live. These dominant norms and cultures are maintained, as they
were created, through hierarchies and oppression. As people, we choose to either
defend this world or work to change it.
But among us are a group of people, sometimes called centrists, who claim to seek
to unite these worlds. They hope for the bells of peace to ring forth a grand unity
that connects all people to singular progressive principles (within existing
hierarchies) that create a long-lasting world which is home to all. This is a mission
that is destined to fail, but is dangerous nonetheless.
The persecution of people due to the power of the privileged is a deliberate
happening which must be vigorously unhinged if we wish to witness the
liberation of people. More importantly, it must be vanquished if we hope for a
better world.
Leftculture is an argument against centrist positioning, particularly concerning
the socio-political issues of identity which have risen to prominent discourse in
recent times. First, memory needs to be brought to the inherent conflict within
political and social problems and following from there, the identification of why
centrist positions fail to defend these issues will be clear. Second, I argue for the
spread of an intersectional approach through the comprehensive revision of left
activism to establish a coherent counterculture and eventually, a powerful
collective identity. The left needs to reform how it values and defines its struggle
to include the multitude of hierarchies that persecute various identity groups.
Also, there should be a determined push to transform the left´s counterculture
into prevailing norms and power. In this sense, there should be a reformation of
the left's culture.
Although the world has constantly witnessed persecution, occasionally people
have joined together in popular movements against it. This has resulted from the
spread of conscious revolt informed by the inception of the simple idea that when
we collectively act, we may cast off our chains. We should not underestimate the
power of a reformed left in spreading ideas of progress. It is certainly the
precursor to transformation in a fragmented world of persecution.
CRITICAL CONFLICT
The combination of rearward interests and the power to advance them
established a world of gross persecution against identities. In differing magnitudes
and contexts, history is marred by violent inhumanity against people of colour,
womxn, gender and sexuality groups, religious groups, people with disabilities,
regional minorities and political groups.
Within the preface of ¨A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy¨,
Karl Marx argues that labour power (material productive forces) will inevitably
conflict with established systems (existing relations of production) with the intent
of transformation. Widely cited as ¨conflict theory¨, Marx argues that the
differing interests of labour power and power-holders result in conflict. In order
to advance their interests, power-holders utilise their power to vanquish the
labourers and thus create class persecution.16
More generally, the argument claims there exists inevitable and continuous
conflict between groups because of the differing interests to protect established
systems and the interests to transform them. As long as there is a group that
wishes change and a group which does not, conflict within contemporary issues in
inherent.
Marx further claims that these interests supercede the groups´ consciousness
describing the inevitable conflict as a ¨social production of their existence¨ which
is ¨independent of their will¨. Here, he was explaining the activity of conflict
(transformations) as natural and unavoidable.
Choosing to neglect the reality of conflict allows for the continuation of
persecution. Power-holders are able to continue advancing their interests at the
expense of their socio-political opponents. Therefore, the conflict is critical. The
16
Karl Marx. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. 1859.
victor´s policies, influence and norms will impact generations of people in a
particular direction of progress or continued persecution.
Socio-political issues have always possessed critical conflict. These issues can not
be allayed through peaceful rhetoric or well-minded intent. Dominant culture
lodges itself vigorously and pervasively in our societies. Cemented socio-political
values cannot be lightly reformed, especially when they bring great benefit to the
oppressor. They require a deliberate restructuring - a transformation.
HIERARCHIES: THE PROBLEM WITH CENTRISM
Those that see the hierarchy, but want to keep it
Centrism is not a bad in itself but it is a bad to itself. It lacks the powerful passion
of progress or the hardened defence of the known. In reality, centrists are softer
forms of opposing political ideology, rather than an absolutely unique political
viewpoint.
Even the staunchest of centrists will struggle to, without appealing to the right or
left, answer the question of our times: ¨Do our societies and the established
systems require a vigorous and holistic restructuring?¨ Answering this places
anyone in the diametrically opposed political schools of leftism and rightism. In
fact, because we live in a fragmented world in a constant state of critical conflict,
centrism cannot exist exclusively outside of the right or left.
When considering conflict theory, it is clear that a holistic binary exists in the
concern of our collective struggle. Any certain political opinion about power
hierarchies either supports the power-holders or advances the interests of the
persecuted. This is a dichotomy the centrist attempts to, but it unable to escape
from.
This binary does not exist for every issue and policy position. In fact, centrism can
only exist because political ideas are a spectrum spanning from hard-left to
hard-right. Certainly, very specific issues and policy positions are not necessarily
binary. Any centrist can appear entirely distinct from the left or the right in
rhetoric, policy and response to issues. This is aided by the reality that most
political engagement is centered around specific issues or policies. How should we
respond to immigration? How should we solve poverty? How do we develop our
country? These questions have multiple differents specific answers and positions
can vary across the political spectrum. This is true.
Moreover, the primary concern of our current politics is pragmatic. We ask
questions about how we can employ more people, whether corporations should
take responsibility for environmental damages, how to address the gender pay gap
etc. These are specific questions about particular problems. So, the centrist can
easily develop a pragmatic platform around answering these questions from
within the current social, political and economic systems. Because of this, they are
not challenged on answering the underlying ideological problems in our current
societies which create and are responsible for each specific issue. This masks their
inability to do so without appealing to the binary. We have to look deeper.
Beneath the political spectrum is a binary when it comes to the simple question,
¨should our society transform?¨
So, we should actually be questioning the fundamental misconceptions and
hierarchies which create problems in our societies. We should be asking how we
can dismantle patriarchy, class inequality, religious intolerance etc. This would
give the centrist no option but to reveal an actual ideological position. The
holistic concern of whether we restructure our societal systems is necessarily
binary. So, when seriously challenged, any centrist must reveal their true
ideological position.
Perhaps, they may stall this inevitable realisation by presenting softer
interpretations of the viewpoints of the privileged or the persecuted. For the
right-centrist, this presents an opportunity to deliberately act against the interests
of the persecuted without being extreme enough to be condemned. The
right-centrists silently draft and enforce policies that privilege big business, men,
the white race and other power-holders in a manner that is too secret or removed
from people for them to be aware of. Also, they may seem moderate enough to
not seem reasonable to resist against. In reality, they create and are responsible for
measures that deepen persecution.
For the left-centrist, this means rejecting holistic restructuring in favour of
instrumentally improving the status quo ever so slightly. However, the work of
the left-centrist is always bitter-sweet. We realise that our society has marginally
improved, however, we are reluctantly aware that not enough has been achieved,
especially for the most persecuted members. This is made worse when we realise
that more progress could have realistically been achieved if there had existed a
greater push for that progress. When the spoils of the progress we derive from the
left-centrist are spent, we will be forced to look toward the radical political left for
a true revolutionary shift.
Worryingly, many people may also trust the political right for that same holistic
change. Noam Chomsky regularly claims that the American working class were
abandoned by the Democratic Party during the latter 20th century. Multitudes of
working class Americans opt to vote Republican (a party that has very little
interest in workers) and indeed voted for Donald Trump. This is because he
presented a platform for holitistic restructuring (although, his administration is
much of the same). When progress is slow and unfelt, people will opt to trust
political organisations and candidates that promise to deliver greater changes. In
some cases, these people have very little interest in the persecuted. However, the
persecuted will opt to place more faith in these people then they would in a
centrist.
By far, the greatest problem with left-centrism is the opportunity for the
established power-holders to seek alternative means of persecution. In this sense,
little would have been actually achieved. The left-centrist rejects removing power
from existing power-holders and in the process grants them permission to
continue pursuing their interests. The consequence is continued persecution. For
its inability to address the holistic and underlying ideological concerns of our
societies, centrism achieves little to satisfy the long-term desires of people, of
progress and of politics.
The biggest fault of the innocent centrist is not of their creation. We have
inherited a world that is deliberately fragmented through the intentions of people
who have no disposition to unify. In such a context, there is no peace without
conflict. There is no established world without a pre-existing battle between
competing ideology. Between oppressor and oppressed, there is no unity.
The centrist may have the intention to use incremental soft power to achieve
progress. This interest may even be informed by a genuine desire for progress and
peace. However, the outcome is continued persecution.
INSTITUTIONAL PERSECUTION: THE PROBLEM WITH
RIGHT-CENTRISM
Those that oppress through systems, structures and institutions
In terms of right-centrism, there are obvious residing issues. Quite observably,
such people have very little interest in the liberation of people, across various
identities. To their merits, they may sometimes have some particular progressive
social beliefs (which separates them from the far-right), but for several concerns
(and in holistic consequence), they support the interests of power-holders. Under
such a system, there can be no liberation of people. Worst of all, they undergo
these activities deliberately with great understanding of the consequence of their
political positions.
Consider the United States´ governments which have ruled since the 1970s.
Whether Democratic or Republican, there have been deliberate efforts to
undermine social progress. Political power is cemented within corporations and
financial institutions, notably a pharmaceutical industry which opposes efforts to
introduce sensible health care and a banking sector which relies on public funds
to sustain irrational risks and dangerous corporate behaviour for rich profit. On
social fronts, mass incarceration of African Americans has surged, through
deliberate policies and activities of federal and state governments. The US has
extensively exercised its hegemony in foreign sovereign states in South America,
Eastern Europe, Northern Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. This is a
surprisingly unrecognised persecution by the US government. Few are aware or
are concerned by the consistent state-terrorism (as Chomsky labels it) committed
by Washington.
These are all products of a spectrum of right-wing policies, some of them
seemingly moderate. However, most of the administrations in this period were
characteristically right-centre governments. In fact, the term ¨establishment¨
describes the efforts by both the Republic and and Democratic Party to
undermine any grassroots or politically ´extreme´ candidates from contesting
elections. So, there has been a deliberate curation of centrist candidates. The
outcome is observably the continuation of persecution. These governments
illustrate the inability for centrists to certainly progress societies, especially when
these centrists are right-leaning against many persecuted groups.
Malcolm X famously delivered a simple analogy. To paraphrase, if a power-holder
stabs a persecuted person in the back and only removes a small part of the knife,
then persecution remains. Right-centrists are simply more moderate versions of
the far-right, but they still wield the knife and they still stab the persecuted. They
do this knowingly and deliberately.
Unfortunately, because of their supposed moderation, there is a perception that
right-centrists are not advancing the interests of power-holders and are not a
danger to persecuted groups. Persecuted groups themselves often rally behind
such candidates under the belief that they are certainly not dangerous. This
phenomenon likely exists because the common perceptions of persecution are
extreme. We expect persecution to be visibly atrocious and obvious. In reality,
modern persecution is institutional. It exists in democratic structures, systems and
institutions. Consider the fact that 18% of the South African prison population
are Coloured17 or that only 0.4% of the White population live below the
Lower-Bound Poverty Line.18 These are not accidental coincidences. They are the
consequence of deliberate design. However, people continue to support the
politicians which design and maintain these realities simply because they are not
physically holding a whip and beating people. People need to condemn both the
direct violent oppression and the indirect institutional oppression.
Right-centrists are the latter.
People, even persecuted groups themselves, consider the slave trade as an obvious
oppression but somehow find the mass incarceration of African Americans or
Coloured South Africans understandable. People consider denying womxn
suffrage rights as a true violation of their liberty but the gender pay gap as a
natural order of reality. This is inconsistent. Oppression is oppression. The
difference between direct and indirect oppression is the manner that it manifests.
However, both forms suppress the wellbeing and determination of the oppressed
group. So, they should both be fought against. We must oppose the interests of
right-centrists if we are concerned with liberation of the oppressed.
17
South African Department of Correctional Services. Annual Report. 2017.
18
Statistics South Africa. Poverty Trends in South Africa. 2017.
The notion that right-centrists are not oppressors is absurd. To repeat,
persecution can certainly be institutional. Our political, social and economic
systems can, through their design and function, exclude and oppress identity
groups. It is thus valuable that a struggle consciousness is spread which diversifies
the popular understanding of persecution. Moreover, people should realise that
the current order of reality and the present nature of our created systems are
simply designed. It is not a natural and inevitable occurrence that people of colour
are disproportionately incarcerated or womxn are underpaid. These are all
deliberate mechanisms by power-holders that they employ to advance their
interests.
The right-centrist specifically uses our social, political and economic systems to
advance the interests of the power-holders. That is the particular mandate that
they serve. If right-centrists lose power, our societies can be far more just and
equal. Good and genuine people believe they are committed to egalitarian
principles that attempt to establish fair societies. If we are truly committed to
liberty and equality, we should seek to disempower the right-centrists who seek to
advance persecution.
So far, these right-centrists have escaped accountability or disdain for their actions
because the popular opinion of their activity is positive. The left is doing too little
to spread a diverse struggle consciousness and our discourse spends too little time
identifying the social hierarchies that create persecution and how right-centrists
are protecting them.
Right-centrism, from the perspective of the persecuted, is a bad in itself. The
appeal of these candidates will persist if political and civic education is not spread.
Even worse, persecution will persist.
PERSECUTION PERSISTS: THE PROBLEM WITH
LEFT-CENTRISM
Those that allow power-holders to persecute
Institutional persecution is not unique to right-centrists. Left-leaning centrists
can often pursue similar policies. However, even if they make progressive efforts,
the consequences will certainly be similar to persecution. When this occurs, the
problem with left-centrists is identical to the problem with right-centrists. To
outrightly distinguish these two groups may be a great political error.
However, let us give left-centrists the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps they do
actually attempt to act in the interests of persecuted groups. In many ways, I do
believe some of these sort of centrists to have genuines interests in progress.
Often, their positions certainly support (or at least appear to support) social
equity.
Still, it is important to recognise that they allow the perpetuity of existing
hierarchies. When centrists recognise value in existing social systems,
power-holders gain legitimacy. Also, since centrists do not ensure the present
systems´s holistic restructuring, power-holders maintain their power and
therefore, their ability to use that power to enforce their interests and prevent the
prevailing of the interests of persecuted groups.
Indeed, there have been periods of mass democratisation, wherein persecuted
groups have achieved significant liberties. The latter end of the 20th Century
landmarked a great global shift toward egalitarian principles, notably the Civil
Rights Movement, the abolishment of apartheid and the decline of totalitarian
states. A great expectation that these events would catalyse greater pushes toward
equity was quickly revoked by the response from privileged groups. The existing
power-holders pushed back.
The great err from 20th Century centrist movements was their inability to
holistically reform power relations between privileged groups and persecuted
groups. It is for this reason why these privileged groups are able to regress societies
and reestablish past persecution. Consider two closely related and easily
observable cases - the United States of America and the Republic of South Africa.
In the United States, progress has led to the abolishment of specific kinds of
persecution, but there has been opportunity to rely on alternative forms of
persecution. For instance, when slavery was abolished, the white Americans
abused the ability to use prisoners for slave labour. African Americans were
arrested en masse for meagre offences, such as vagrancy. Then these African
Americans were forced into prison labour. In effect, the power-holders replaced a
single form of oppression with another. As conflict theory elaborates, it is within
their nature to do so.
Similarly, following the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s was the emergence
of dog-whistle politics and the Southern Strategy, wherein the Republican Party
politically realigned in a direction of racial persecution against African Americans,
including instances of deliberate suburban segregation. Following this was an era
of mass incarceration of African Americans, through deliberate means.
In South Africa, the end of apartheid was not the end of racial inequality or even
the elimination of segregation. In fact, millions of white South Africans actively
resisted the termination of apartheid. The outgoing apartheid-era president, F.W.
De Klerk held a whites-only referendum to ascertain how many white people
were in favour of continued reform toward a new constitution. In some cities, the
majority of white people voted ¨No¨ against the reforms. In some cities that voted
¨Yes¨, the margin of victory was low. Consider also that during apartheid, South
Africa consistently held elections for white citizens and a majority of white South
Africans consistently voted for the National Party. By casting their votes, they
endorsed and were actively involved in enforcing the system of apartheid.
Unsurprisingly, post-democratic South Africa experiences gross levels of racial
inequality and persecution. Most notably, the economic separation between racial
groups is wide. Black South Africans experience massive levels of unemployment,
job insecurity and poverty whereas white South Africans experience large levels of
economic privilege, job security and low levels of unemployment.
The centrist leaders from these two nations who inspired the initial progress were
honoured and revered internationally, which is a common consequence of
adopting left-centrist positioning. Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela
received Nobel Peace Prizes and eternal iconisation.
An argument can indeed be made that they received the awards deservedly, not as
a result of their struggle (as numerous significant figures were involved in these
struggles), but rather as a result of their authoring of a counterculture which
collectivised people to revolt. Although, I believe that other notable figures in the
United States and South Africa pursued a far more vigorous counterculture that
may have shaken these societies at their oppressive cores. Nonetheless, King Jr and
Mandela continue to inspire generations of people today and their struggle was
somewhat in the direction of the leftculture that we need to curate. We can
recognise these figures for what they did achieve. However, their centrist
positions inhibited complete or in the least, adequate liberty - despite all the praise
they deserve and receive.
The praise of these figures also highlights why centrist positioning creates
immense appeal. A political candidate is able to receive immense support from
wide groups of people and established hierarchies. Thus, they gain support from
both power-holders (to a limited extent) and the persecuted (to a great extent). In
their rhetoric, they are unifying these two groups. The reality is that they are
misleading the persecuted into supporting their campaign whilst knowingly
supporting the hierarchies which aid the power-holders. Ironically, power-holders
care very little for left-centrists. For power-holders, they are political tools to
advance power. The left-centrists are only rewarded slightly in return for the
maintenance of power hierarchies. Nonetheless, left-centrists appease
power-holders.
When left-centrists gain such enormous political support from power-holders, we
must reflect critically why this occurs. Power-holders certainly would not support
these candidates if those candidates aimed to abolish their power. Moreover,
power-holders use their economic capital to influence left-centrists to support
hierarchies and create policies to the benefit of the power-holder. Consider the
differences in the funding of Bernie Sanders’ political campaign and the funding
of all the other mainstream Democratic Party candidates in both the recent and
more distant past. It is clear that Sanders did not receiving immense funding from
many power-holding groups and corporations, which means he is not acting in
their interest. Conversely, the other Democratic candidates certainly are receiving
funding from these groups and are certainly acting in those group’s interests.
This is not unique to the United States. Democracies around the world have
left-centrist candidates with major support from power-holding groups.
Critically, people should start to question why they garner so much support from
power-holders. More importantly, we should realise that once they ascend to
power, they will not bite the hand which feeds them.
So, if left-centrists act in the interests of power-holders, we need to make sense of
their immense support among the persecuted. Here, we can explain the
phenomenon simply as a lack of struggle consciousness. First, persecuted groups
are acutely aware of specific issues, but are not always cognisant of the underlying
ideology creating them. This makes them susceptible to the pragmatic message of
left-centrists.
Second, left-centrists rarely address the public with information on their policies
(likely, because they know the public will reject them). Instead, these candidates
spread progressive rhetoric. This means they sell a great vision to people, even
though they have no intention to realise that vision. People are unaware of the
true motives of a left-centrist, so they buy the candidate’s vision and support
them. This is in effect, the ploys used by advertising companies. They shift focus
from a product to a brand. They associate the brand with desirable human values
and thus incentivise people to support a product by associating it with a value. In
essence, people are not supporting the political candidate, they are supporting a
progressive value and simply are led to believe that the candidate represents that
value. This was most greatly experienced in Barack Obama’s 2008 Hope
campaign. Voters likely knew very little of what Obama’s policies would be,
especially his intentions for an expansive drone programme. However, Obama
appeared to equal hope and people want to support that progressive value. The
Hope campaign, as Chomsky repeatedly alludes to, was one of the greatest
advertising campaigns.
Third, left-centrists are able to use their enormous support from power-holders to
spread their message to a far greater audience than people who lack that support.
Moreover, they can spread their message consistently and dogmatically, thus
vanquishing the message of genuine people, who would obviously lack the
economic capital to compete for people’s conscious perceptions.
So, popular support for left-centrism is itself a manufactured product. This can
only be opposed through a grassroots spread of struggle consciousness. Even the
staunchest of advertising campaigns is unable to compete with the conscious
truth.
If we return to the earlier examples of South Africa and the US, a clear feature of
left-centrism is observable. In both cases, power remained with the privileged
groups. Dog-whistle politics and The Southern Strategy could only exist because
white politicians maintained full control of political discourse. They could
enforce laws that incarcerated African Americans because they still held the
power to do so. The same people that voted for the apartheid government in
South Africa and voted against reform are the same people in corporate control of
property, production and resource. This inhibits redistributive reform. In fact,
this is exactly the consequence that Marx's conflict theory aptly predicts.
In reality, power must be removed from the privileged to ensure sustainable
progress. Previous social advancement cannot and will not catalyse future
progress if the power of the privileged remains intact. The clear consequence will
be socio-political regress as the privileged act on advancing their interests through
their power.
Even worse, perceptions that the struggle has been won will be spread to both the
privileged and the persecuted. People will claim that injustice has ceased and
societies are currently fair and equal. Furthermore, members of persecuted groups
themselves will spread these ideas, which embolden the privileged to point out
these people as if to claim that “even one of your own says that injustice has
ceased.” So, the centrist eliminates the perception of persecution but not its
reality. This is certainly a problem. It is difficult to collectivise people against
invisible oppression. In fact, that is the great problem facing contemporary left
movement - proving that oppression exists. So, the left-centrist will rarely be
challenged by the persecuted.
As earlier elaborated, institutions and systems can cause persecution so it becomes
a major problem when left-centrism creates the illusion of victory. In fact, it is
within the left-centrists interests to ensure that the population believes the fight
against oppression has been won. Recall, that they wish to protect existing
hierarchies. The best means to protect hierarchies is to have the population
believe that there is nothing oppressive or flawed about those hierarchies. For
instance, South Africans do not question aspects of South African law, which
disproportionately harm persecuted groups. They believe that the struggle against
oppression ended with the introduction of democracy. This is the consequence of
deliberate misleading by left centrists.
Worryingly, the tugs of progress and regress will continue if we maintain centrist
positioning. For as long as we refuse to depose the privileged of their power,
persecution will reinvent itself and persist. If centrism persists, persecution
persists.
The situation is worsened by how prevalent centrism has become. In present
times, centrism is certainly a popular position for people who have ascended to
political power. It appears that centrism, which was once a radical counterculture
is an established safe position. From the perspective of people who have gained
political power, it is far easier to support the ideal of the persecuted whilst
maintaining the systems of the privileged. This is because they appear to be
satisfying or unifying both parties (or from their perspective, voting
constituencies). However, In reality, it is clear that the privileged are victors.
So, the centrist politician is able to exploit the concerns of persecuted groups by
diverting their attention to specific pragmatic issues and through rhetoric that
empathises with their struggle. In the absence of wider struggle-consciousness
about the underlying ideological problems which create persecution, the centrist
is able to convince people to focus on some of its symptoms. They are assisted by
election campaigns, political rhetoric, issue-focused media reporting and a lack of
struggle-consciousness. If people were more aware of the need to holistically
restructure our societies, centrist positioning would become mightfully
challenging.
Consider President Barack Obama´s response to a question from a military
personnel about Colin Kaepernick taking a knee during the singing of their
country's anthem in protest of racial injustice.19 Holistically, note that President
Obama will briefly recognise the ideal that Kaepernick is expressing, but will
mostly defend existing hierarchies in the pursuit of unifying different groups.
In the first part of his statement, Obama will represent the viewpoint of the
existing hierarchy i.e. the viewpoint against Kaepernick. This can be described as
the conservative view.
¨I believe that us honouring our flag and our anthem is part of what
binds us together as a nation and I think that for me, for my family
[and] for those who work in the White House, we recognise what it
19
CNN. Obama discusses Kaepernick's anthem protest. 2016
means to us but also what it means to the men and women who are
fighting on our behalf.
Notice that Obama qualifies all his references to the conservative view with the
word ¨our¨ to suggest that their understanding of the issue belongs to the
country. He states this viewpoint creates the nation and that it is represented by
the authorities. Here, he establishes that the conservative view is in line with the
country, its government and the people who belong to it.
Contrast this with how he expresses the viewpoint of Kaepernick, Black Lives
Matter and the general protest for racial equality:
But I'm also always trying to remind folks that part of what makes this
country special is that we respect people's rights to have a different
opinion and to make different decisions about how they want to express
their concerns. The test of our fidelity to our constitution, to freedom of
speech [and] to our bill of rights is not when it's easy but when it's hard.
We fight sometimes so that people can do things that we disagree with.
But that's what freedom means in this country.
Unlike the previous viewpoint, Obama does not defend Kaepernick's protest. He
only suggests that people should accept it. This time, he qualifies it as something
that is ¨different¨ and contributes to making the nation ¨special¨. It is something
that tests the country's freedoms. Weirdly, he does not express these rights to
protest as liberating rights or rights that are good by nature. Instead, he outright
suggests there is no flaw in disagreeing with Kaepernick's protest, but we just have
to accept the protests because it happens to be defended by law.
In the previous viewpoint, the conservatives were defended regardless of fluid
laws. Even worse, the final statement is certainly not a positive description of the
protest. The statement ¨But that's what freedom means¨ suggests that the
conservatives were just unlucky to live in a society that has rules which interpret
freedom in the present manner. Here, realise that Obama furthers the idea that
established systems are good by nature and challenges to those systems are not
necessarily inherently good, but people should just accept them. This is a problem
because it refuses to challenge the ideological structure of a society that is
persecuting people.
So, my hope would be that as this debate surfaces, we´re always reminding
ourselves that in a democracy like ours, they're going to be a lot of folks who
do stuff that we just don't agree with but as long as they´re doing it
within the law, than we can voice our opinion objecting to it but it's
also their right. You know, I think that it's also important for us to
recognise that sometimes, out of these controversies, we start getting into a
conversation and I want everybody to listen to each other. So, I want
Mr Kaepernick and others who are on a knee to listen to the pain of what
that might cause to someone who, for example had a spouse or child who
was killed in combat and why it hurts them to see somebody not standing.
But, I also want people to think about the pain that he may be expressing
about somebody who's lost a loved one that they think was unfairly shot.
Here, Obama attempts to reconcile the two viewpoints into unity through
listening to each other. He reinforces the idea that the reason we should accept
the protests (which we ¨don't agree with¨) is simply because it is protected by law,
which itself is just an established social code. He also advocates conservatives
voicing their disagreement. He refers to Kaepernick's protest as a ¨controversy¨,
which is a largely negative description.
Then Obama commits a great logical error in creating a false equivalency between
the two issues when encouraging the two parties to listen to each other. In his
view, no one party is wrong and no one party is right. They both create pain on
each other and therefore must remedy each other.
However, conservative pain stems from a constitutional right (which even Obama
concedes). I would further this by saying it is inherently of good nature to protest
against persecution. If the conservatives receive pain from merely viewing another
person practicing their constitutional right to kneel, it is not the fault of the
protester. This is absurd. The mere feeling of pain does not mean someone has
been wronged. In reality, any privileged group receives pain when they lose their
ability to access that privilege. A person or group of people with negative intent
(e.g. serial killers, rapists etc.) may feel ¨pain¨ when they are unable to carry out
their negative intent. This in no ways means we must act to remedy that pain. In
essence, it is the pain of not being able to cause pain on others that these people
feel.
Moreover, it is not the fault of African Americans that American soldiers are
killed in the first place. It is the fault of the war-hungry hegemonic state. The
conservatives direct their frustration toward an entirely innocent group of people
for the sins that group did not commit. That is even more absurd.
Conversely, the African Americans are protesting directly against the state. It is
after all, the police of the state which is indiscriminately targeting and killing
them. Moreover, the pain they feel is motivated by the loss of constitutional rights
of fellow African Americans.
So, the conservatives are illegitimately pained by the access of constitutional rights
and are directing their actual legitimate pain toward an innocent actor. The
African Americans are rightfully pained by the loss of constitutional rights and
directing this pain toward the guilty actor. This is not a case of both sides
committing sin and needing to listen to each other.
Playground reconciliation tactics cannot remedy this socio-political issue. Simply,
the state must redress racial inequality, especially in instances where the state
causes the inequality. The state must stop sending its soldiers needlessly to die.
The state must stop manufacturing persecution against its people. However,
Obama diverts this conversation to a polarity between ideological groups, which
will ensure that conflict is perpetuated between these groups rather than the state.
There´s another issue Obama creates in his statement. He states that Kaepernick
¨may¨ be expressing pain and if he is, it is the pain of somebody else who has lost a
loved one. Moreover, that pain is motivated by ¨thinking¨ someone was ¨unfairly¨
shot. Here, Obama is stating this pain as an uncertainty. He is uncertain if African
Americans possess this pain when it is not their loved ones that were specifically
killed. He is also uncertain if the killing was truly unfair. This is a ridiculous
misunderstanding. Surely, the persecution of a particular race fundamentally
impacts any member of that race. Surely, any African American may live in fear of
being the subsequent victim. Surely, any African American is pained by the reality
that their identity is relegated by the privileged groups and the state.
Conversely, Obama is certain about the pain of the conservative. In fact, he
openly states earlier that he, his family and the state he once governed are of that
view.
In closing his statement, Obama states the following:
One of the things I always say about American democracy is it can be
frustrating but it's the best system we´ve got and the only way that we
make it work is to see each other, listen to each other, try to be respectful of
each other and not just go into separate corners. I do hope that anybody
who is trying to express any political view of any sort understands that
they do so under the blanket of the protection of our men and women
in uniform and that that appreciation of that sacrifice is never lost.
Here, it becomes clear that Obama is certainly favouring the conservative view.
He concludes with a message for the protesters that they should remember the
military and their ´blanket of protection´. Throughout his whole statement, he
makes no mention of police brutality, racial inequality or historical injustices in
the US. The irony is the entire protest exists because African Americans are not
safe. They are being systematically killed by the state. So, to remind them of their
safety is farcical.
What Obama´s statement reveals is that centrist positioning fails to even achieve
its desired goal of neutrality and unity. Even if Obama had been more vocal of his
support of Kaepernick´s ideals, his support for established systems and hierarchies
is support for an inequality.
The position seems even more absurd when compared to the progressive positions
of celebrity, Terry Crews, who was once an NFL player.20 Recall that although all
members of a persecuted racial group are privy to persecution, an elite minority
will be excused from many of the harsh realities of most of the group. However,
here is a member of that elite minority who manages to profess their criticism of
racial inequality and their support for protest.
20
HOT 97. Terry Crews Goes Off On Kneeling For The Flag, NCAA, & Sends
An Important Message. 2017
Crews said the following (in response to a question about whether he would be
kneeling if he were in the NFL):
¨Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean come on. First of all, I totally get the fact
that you know, it's about the soldiers who fought and bled and died. But,
what they gotta understand is that 70% of the NFL is African American.
This is about the slaves who worked and bled and died (and people who
are still bleeding and dying). We're talking about something that just
can't be wiped under the table. It's wild because if a major crime has been
committed - if there been rape, murder or pillage - you can't come to even a
grandson of that person whose been murdered and say, ´Come on man, get
over it.´ How could you do that?
What kind of insensit- How insensitive could you be? I would never walk
up to a Holocaust survivor, his family [or] his grandson and be like, ¨Get
over it dude.¨ What are you talking about? It just sends goosebumps right
down my spine - the insensitivity [and] lack of empathy. You´re talking
about a business that´s 70% African Americans working for you. You can't
do that. You just- It's so wild.¨
Crews finds it unimaginable that people would reject the protest of a persecuted
group, given the context of history and the under-discussed context of the racial
demographic of the NFL itself. Although he recognises the conservative view in
relation to military soldiers, he painfully stresses the legitimacy of the protests.
Perhaps, he does not accurately represent the more moderate conservative views
further in his discussion, but he does well to defend the principle of the protest.
Understand that Crews and any other supporter of the cause is not displaying a
disastrous bias by choosing a side. He is allowing his opinion to be informed by
history and the pursuit for progress. If anyone considers either of these truthfully,
they will be forced to accept the view of the protestors.
In essence, centrists never truly align with the values of progress and especially not
of transformation. They are supporters of established hierarchies. They are unable
to solve socio-political issues because they have no true intention to disrupt the
status quo. As Crews rightly states, a major crime has been committed and
continues to be committed. If we refuse to view established power-holders as
these criminals then we will never stop them from committing their crimes.
Centrists, even those on the left, continue to pretend that the privileged are
innocent. This is the worst way to solve their crimes.
If centrism persists, persecution persists. The world shall witness the reprise of
orchestral oppression which rings loud to the ears of the awakened but softly to
the dreaming centrists, whose senses are kept elated by the rhetorical niceties their
mouths speak but their unconscious minds can never bring forth.
ABANDON THE CENTRE
A ship built with flaws will surely sink. Its design is not dependent on its captain,
so changing the person before the wheel cannot be equated to fixing the holes in
its stern. People have developed the idea that a change of presidency without
altering the general systems of economy and society can fundamentally change
their societies. The problem is regularly presented as a problem of leadership or
political party, instead of a problem rooted in ideology and system. People believe
these proclamations as truth placing their faith in elections between
similarly-minded political elites, made different solely by pragmatics and party
colours. The problem is not that we have elected the incorrect centrist leaders.
The problem is that we continue to elect centrist leaders.
Even in situations where particular leaders, dubbed New Deal presidents, have
brought significant material progress, their efforts have failed to remove the root
cause of our societal issues. Moreover, the progress is easily overturned by future
presidents, predominantly because the power-holders fight back. The ship is not
its leader. The ship is not even its crew. The ship is a fierce and well-designed
machine. It has the nature of whatever properties were built into it long before it
left the shore. Changing the direction of the ship and patching its parts while it is
on-course cannot change the nature of the ship. Painting the ship in a different
colour or renaming the ship cannot change the ship. Our offshore activities
cannot change the ship.
We must return the machine to the shore, dismantle its parts and build its
properties anew. People may refer to this activity as revolution and liberation.
This is because the crew of the ship experience toll and persecution as result of its
design. Through redesign, the members of the ship can be set free of the ship’s
inherent chains. To achieve this, they must be prepared to abandon the ship and
force its return to the shore.
In concrete terms, this means dismantling the various systems of oppression -
patriarchy, racism, kapitalism etc. In their stead, our societies must become ready
to ascend toward a ship that sails fairly over the seas. People will be ill-prepared
and unwilling to challenge the nature of our world if struggle consciousness is
withheld from their awareness. More importantly, we must believe that our world
can transform and exist differently.
For some systems, such as the economic, alternative ideology requires its own
reconstruction. The left must continue its pursuit of this ship. However, for
many forms of oppression, there can exist realistically a world that challenges the
specific persecution at its roots. This reality is upon us. Already, there are
alternative societies that await us upon the shore. They require our determination
to return and board them. Certainly, we must abandon the political centre.
The knowledge of alternative forms of life may haunt us just as much as it
haunted Plato’s philosopher in The Republic, who was freed from their chains
within the cave and exposed to the harshness of an unaccustomed reality. If ever
we develop to accept these forms, we may escape imprisonment and understand
the mechnisations of the world. Although, this knowledge may continue to haunt
us when we return to spread the revelation to our peers. Reading Plato’s allegory
may lead to the conclusion that spreading consciousness is a trivial and dangerous
pursuit. Even those who experience oppression from the shadows of the world
may view such oppression ad just and normal. They may fight those who wish to
halt it, despite them being victims of it. In this view, the crew shall never abandon
the ship because they have accepted its nature as the truest form.
However, reality is different to the Allegory of the Cave. Although people
experience oppression from the shadows of the world, we are influenceable to the
truth. Oppression is harsh enough to create the opportunity for us to realise its
evil. Persecution can serve to motivate a desire for greater understanding of the
world and means to escape imprisonment. The people in Plato’s cave had
unconditionally accepted the shadows and refuted attempts to view them
otherwise. This is what hinders their progression, but people are not generally so.
Our opinions shift, our ideas progress and our societies escape from stagnancy
into development. None of this would be possible if we always rejected ideas on
the basis of their newness. Certainty, it isn't easy to spread consciousness of
oppression among people -- but is a sure possible task.Furthermore, people in our
societies can organically reject their chains and cast them off. They are aware of
the existence of their pain. They may lack a deeper struggle consciousness, but
surely, they have not accepted the shadows on the wall as an undeniable truth.
People have not accepted centrism as truth.
Reality does indeed have negative consequence for people that seek liberation.
Instead of just the internal suffering and suffering from our peers described by
Plato, people will also encounter an external suffering from power-holders. These
people will fight against the spread of struggle consciousness and strive to keep
their oppressive ship at sea. Despite this, the liberator must wage forward.
Personal harm is a necessity for a greater cause. But even then, the prospect of
liberation is a far greater benefit than the sum of all backlash and opposition from
the privileged.
By far, the worst of dangers in trying to reform the world is a mentality of
hopelessness. Often, liberation will seem daunting and unachievable. Perhaps, our
contributions will be judged by ourselves to be inadequate and we may think of
ourselves as incapable. Nietzsche might describe us as the bird which pauses to
rest on a rock while attempting to fly over an ocean. The bird observes other birds
committed to the feat and considers itself inferior. Even if we must occasionally
rest, count our losses, collect our bearings and re-attempt, we are not that bird.
That bird may fly in open skies but it is still mentally chained and views itself in
relation to the other. As liberated people, we may think of ourselves as
autonomous beings independent of any other and able to fly across any open
expanse of sky over into the horizon of liberation.
The liberator must liberate themselves from William Blake’s “mind-forged
manacles” prior to liberating the remainder of the persecuted. We must prepare
our minds to abandon centrism and its comfortability. Our disposition should
understand the need for holistic restructuring and pursue it. Above all, we must
believe it is attainable and we can play a significant enough role in its
actualisation.
Hope is an indispensable requirement for our collective struggles. Without the
anticipation of a greater society established through egalitarian principles, we will
certainly become susceptible to despair. Our struggle will be a hard and long
battle that requires optimism.
So, abandon the centre, even if it is a challenging task. Somewhere on the shore of
our humanity, is a ship that will journey to our liberation.
MARX IS DEAD
In The Parable of the Madman, Friedrich Nietzsche presents the world-famous
“God is dead” expression. In doing so, Nietzsche laments this loss of belief,
believing himself that a meaningless of life would spread as a consequence. This
nihilism can be observed in many parts of the world today, but in many respects,
people have maintained a sensible desire to live and seek meaning. Perhaps, his
prediction that the loss of divine belief would create a loss of meaningful life is
disproved.
In some ways, Karl Marx played a significant role in redefining meaning. For well
over a century, workers have collectivised to establish value for their
contributions to societies and development. The class struggle, which Marx
believed to be inherent to the consciousness of people, was also important for
how people defined themselves and their position in the world.
Moreover, there was a strong belief that the world could and would improve.
Marx strongly believed that the conflict between the persecuted and the
privileged could cease when the persecuted collectivised in revolt against the
privileged and gained power. In fact, he set out to spread a class consciousness to
achieve this aim. Marxists revolutions were not devoid of optimism and hope for
the future. In fact Marxist revolutions were inspired by these very beliefs and an
understanding of how we should value life itself.
If anything, Marx reignited meaning. It is common to think of communism as
dogmatic belief itself and its leaders have enjoyed unique cults of personality that
no other ideological doctrine has been able to achieve. The workers of the world
believed in Marx and his writing actualised their living.
But, Marxism failed miserably. Apart from the undesirable authoritarian 20th
century states which brought about gross limitations of liberty, people have been
unable to escape market-based living. An alternative to kapitalist thinking has
been unable to resonate naturally among people in the world. In many ways,
Marxism is as dead as Marx is.
To paraphrase the Parable of the Madman and bring its thought to a more
contemporary loss of belief:
Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright
morning hours, ran to the marketplace, and cried incessantly: "I seek
Marx! I seek Marx!" -- As many of those who did not believe in Marx were
standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost?
asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding?
Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated? -- Thus they yelled
and laughed.
The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes.
"Whither is Marx?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him -- you
and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we
drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?
What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither
is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we
not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all
directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through
an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not
become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to
light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the
gravediggers who are burying Marx? Do we smell nothing as yet of the
divine decomposition? Marxism, too, decomposes. Marx is dead. Marx
remains dead. And we have killed him.
"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What
was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to
death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is
there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred
games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for
us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There
has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us -- for the sake
of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto."
Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they,
too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his
lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come
too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still
on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men.
Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time;
deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is
still more distant from them than most distant stars -- and yet they have
done it themselves.21
It may certainly feel that the re-emergence of kapitalism and the rescindment of
Marxist beliefs echoes a great hopelessness that we are unable to comfort ourselves
from. In fact, consistently, economic outlook portrays a world of great inequality
and meaninglessness. The class struggle may feel lost on us - and with it, the great
optimism that Marxism provided to both our material lives and our inherent
value.
The power-holders of our societies, who are seemingly financial institutions and
multinational corporations, have continued to entrench oppressive inequality all
the while convincing people that our current ways of living is natural and
unavoidable. The vile maxim of Adam Smith seems to be ringing true: “All for
ourselves and nothing for other people seems, in every age of the world, to have been
the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.”
One may strongly believe that without Marxism, there is no hope for the world -
just as Nietzsche proclaimed about religious belief. It is clear. The economic
system of kapitalism is flawed and oppressive. The exploitation of workers, gross
economic inequality, accompanying imperialism, consistent market failure and
instability, rampant irrationality, ill distribution of property, commodity and
necessity, unsustainability, tarnished history and inability to self-correct are
legitimate and strongly-defended criticisms.
21
(paraphrased). Friedrich Nietzsche. The Madman. 1887.
However, Marxists and other anti-kapitalists need to take the opportunity to
think anew how we create meaning in relation to shared struggle. The left needs
to adopt more than just class-based thinking. Of course, we require a sound
economic system to replace the current. Thus far, alternatives have either
regressed on liberty and livelihood or have simply only created slightly improved
conditions. A true alternative is definitely necessary to break apart the gross
injustice of the current market and free the world´s impoverished, persecuted,
undervalued, starving and meek who lay in want. But, we also require a strong
alternative which stands against the test of human interest, the ability to produce
sufficiently and the ability to create more freedoms than prior.
In order to achieve this, we must challenge ourselves to think. Slavoj Zizek
addresses such a subject in a brief interview for Big Think, titled ¨Don't Act.
Think¨22 where he expresses, in part, the following:
¨Okay, we heard your story … protest (horrible), big banks depriving us of
billions, hundreds, thousands of billions of common people´s money. Okay,
but what do you really want?
What should replace the system? And then you get one big confusion. You
get either a general moralistic answer, like ´People shouldn´t serve money.
Money should serve people.´ …
… So either this or some kind of vague Keynesian social democracy, or a
simple moralistic critique, and so on and so on. So, you know, it's easy to be
just formally anti-kapitalist, but what does it really mean? It's totally
open.
This is why, as I always repeat, with all my sympathy for Occupy Wall
Street movement, it's result was… I call it a Bartleby lesson. Bartleby, of
course, Herman Melville's Bartleby, you know, who always answered his
favourite ´I would prefer not to´. The message of occupy Wall Street is, I
would prefer not to play the existing game. …
22
Big Think. Don't Act. Just Think. 2012
… Beyond this, they don´t have an answer and neither do I. For me, Occupy
Wall Street is just a signal. It's like clearing the table. Time to start
thinking¨
So, we must address progressive thought. We must expose ourselves to the
overlooked, misunderstood depths of our understanding and find in that abyss,
the path forward. Therefore, rather than interpreting the current Marxism as the
sole earnest solution to the current economic systems, we ought to believe in the
existence of alternatives and use such thought as means to shape thinking about
those stronger solutions. At first, we may not be able to create replacements of
current economic knowledge or attempts to close in the gaps. Initially, our
premature ideas will serve merely as a plate on the recently cleared table that we
may decide to eat.
In due time, our collective concentration can surely create a renewed economic
system. But more than this, the left should owe its concentration to diverse forms
of persecution. To be void of persecution requires holistic liberations across all
forms of living, not simply economic means. In this view, Marxism would never
have fully liberated people and served as an ideal understanding of meaning in any
case.
Marx is truly dead. Now, the world must give way to a reformed leftculture.
SOCIAL ECONOMY
Social economy in the present. Socialism in the future.
The left has long since battled to create and spread an economic alternative to
market-based economies which will achieve social objectives (fair economy, equal
distribution, economic liberation for the common people) without reasonable
doubt. Moreover, there are great concerns that attempts to implement any
socialist system will lead to great failure -- the scale of which is well-known to the
world. The current economic crisis in Venezuela is the most recent episode of
skepticism for socialist economies. Although, Venezuela is a far-shot away from
actual socialist economies, it still makes the international community nervous
about socialism itself. The country certainly made very strategically weak
decisions such as reliance on oil-commodity, price ceilings on goods, limiting
imports and other errors, however, the economy remained a market-based mixed
economy. It certainly was not an alternative -- just a bad rendition of kapitalism.
In any case, the left has a great burden to prove that “it won’t be a Venezuela” and
we won’t have the luxury of proving that after-the-fact. This means we won’t be
able to implement a socialist system and then prove afterwards that it works. The
left needs to produce enormous prima facie evidence and then convince the
international community. Even if the left produced powerful economic theories,
the international power-holders and the masters of our societies would have no
incentive to accept them. In fact, they would actively oppose any such liberating
ideas and even convince the common people to oppose it too. Currently, there is a
massive opposition to single-payer universal healthcare in the United States,
despite there being a strong industrialised economy. Certainly, the backlash is
consistent with the interests of power.
So, the left won’t convince the world to adopt socialism at any near point. What
the left can achieve is to advance social economies. These remain mixed
market-based systems, however, they stress economic cooperation, volunteerism,
nonprofit work and collective interest. The social sector already exists in a
mixed-market economy alongside the public and private sector. The left should
inspire a push to increase the share of a market economy to the social sector. This
is certainly no easy task, but creates stronger outcomes then maintaining the
status quo or pushing for outright socialism.
Realise that market-based economies exist in the consciousness of people. Even if
the left were to defeat power-holders, there remains the learned behaviour to
engage with humanity on the basis of a market. In effect, the common people,
would behave in a manner that returns the world to a kapitalist market system.
To address this, the common people must be weaned off kapitalism and be shown
a different behaviour. A social economy behaviour must also be willingly adopted
by the common people, which cannot occur through force or centralised power.
So, the left should consider maintaining a mixed-market system (in the interim)
whilst growing the social sector of the economy. The consequence would result in
social economies, which should make the transition to socialism more likely in the
future.
Certainly, I have not provided comprehensive economic analysis on this subject.
However, if the left aligns itself with the objective of decentralised social
economies, greater discourse on the subject shall arise. Importantly, we should not
abandon socialism, but we should consider a stronger route to transition. That
begins with a social economy.
THE LEFT STRUGGLES
Persecution is no nursery scuffle. It is a deliberately established culture of
hierarchy and maltreatment created by masters of societies. The privileged are
dogmatically instructed to support and defend through all manner of their
resource, the systems that allow its perpetuation. This includes ensuring that the
oppressed are unaware of the systemic nature of their persecution, are kept in
positions of powerlessness to disable the pursuit of their interests, are kept
chained by absurd restrictive laws which apply solely to them while
simultaneously provoked to descend into activities of lawlessness and are worst of
all, encouraged to fight amongst themselves to prevent a collective and uniting
force from revolting against the privileged.
At first instinct, one may believe this only applies to the persecution of race and
class. At closer glance, it certainly applies through all manners of persecution. An
extensive list should include persecution on the bases of sex, gender, sexuality,
ability, nationality, ethnicity, language, size, religion and more. It is the view of
intersectional writers, such as notable contemporary feminist writers, that these
various persecutions do not exist in isolation and can and do intersect. Our
understanding of systematic persecution should be informed by this realisation.
How can the left define and include all necessary struggles? This is the first
challenge faced by the modern left.
Finding a working solution to the struggle against persecution has been the grail
of writers from antiquity. However, consistently, attempts to restructure societies
have been met with resistance from the persecuted groups themselves. In this
view, motivated by their consciousness, they often refuse to provoke or fight
against the privileged. Moreover, they are burdened by their situational and
immediate struggles.
Quite disdainfully, scholars have taken to the beat of addressing these people as
unconscious, scared and ignorant. However, I believe them to be fully conscious
and creating decisions in the best interest of their immediate realities, which face
immediate deprivation. Understand that persecution creates a culture of inability
to fight against persecution. In this way, its perpetuation becomes an effortless
task for its privileged handlers.
This does not mean that there is no reality where the persecuted may collectivise
and revolt - it also does not mean that the privileged live without fear of a
potential revolt. It only means that collectivisation under these conditions, which
are not favourable, is a daunting task.
If collectivisation is achieved, there is inadequate representation of all
disadvantaged or oppressed groups. There remain internal power imbalances
within this group because some oppressed people face multiple power
disadvantages which create greater marginalisation, as intersectional writers
express. This means that the left may have to adopt an all-or-nothing approach to
mobilisation. Either, people who join the leftculture support the struggles of all
disadvantaged groups or they are cast out. This certainly solves the problem of
who to include.
How can the left collectivise? This is the second challenge faced by the modern
left.
As already established, there are many difficulties. Even when people find means
to collectivise, more issues are created. First, there is the ability for the legitimate
struggle to be exploited by individuals with skewed interests. Second, there are
members of certain identity struggles that are privileged in relation to other
identity struggles and often oppress other identities. Third, there is the horseshoe
theory which basically claims that the radicalism of the left and the radicalism of
the right bear such similar consequences on people, in action and through
potential interpretation that teleologically, they are similar. This leaves behind the
centrists as the seemingly opposing reasonable force. Fourth, there is the fact that
centrist positioning has made historically reasonable left positions seem more
radical than they are in nature because of how radical they seem relative to the
centrist position. These issues and more have inhibited the progress and liberation
of persecuted groups, despite their collectivisation. In essence, the left faces
internal power struggles and external negative connotations.
The left will have to overcome centrism to solve these problems. Also, as stated
above, the left needs to be stricter on an all-or-nothing intersectional approach to
prevent internal oppression from within the left and the exploitation of its
struggle.
How can the left reform its internal mechanisms and its external perception? This
is the third challenge faced by the modern left.
These questions, particularly the third one, have no simple answer and certainly
have become the dedication of modern left literature. Quite obviously, persecuted
groups need to renew the manner in which they collectivise.
Who are the left? Who are the persecuted?
It may come as a surprise to learn that in the United States, Arabs are classified as
white. In fact, Arab American culture has developed a friendliness to whiteness
which may be viewed as a privilege. However, they simultaneously experience
alienation, particularly with the rise of Middle Eastern xenophobia in the West.
Arab people on the African continent certainly experience a persecution of the
neoliberal West. So, with much ambiguity, one might find themselves
embarrassed to define Arab people as a persecuted group in certain regions.
Similarly, consider that most speakers of the Afrikaans language in South Africa
are people of colour. The language is considered to be the language of an
oppressor and certainly, without apartheid, there would be far fewer speakers of
the Afrikaans language. However, in many ways, the South African Coloured
population has claimed the language as invaluable and indigenous to them. This
certainly has ramifications for the classification of the language. At the same time,
the sort of Afrikaans spoken commonly in coloured communities is viewed
condescendingly by white Afrikaans speakers. There is a common social
distinction between so-called white Afrikaans and so-called Coloured Afrikaans.
So, in this case, it may be possible to denounce the white Afrikaans nationalism
and oppression without including any people of colour.
Still, there are clear grey areas that are tough to navigate. Worst of all, there are
instances where most of the world can be interpreted as persecuted. The left is
often synonymous with the phrase ¨We are the 99%¨ in reference to the super
wealthy minorities with extensive economic and political power. In this view,
roughly 99% of the world are oppressed by 1% of the world and basically everyone
faces persecution. An odd view to profess.
Perhaps, the left will find it useful to understand that identities can perform the
role of oppressor and oppressed simultaneously. Black men can face oppression
from white people while simultaneously oppressing black womxn. A religious
community can face oppression in one particular country and also be the
oppressive force in another.
This is in no way a doctrine of ¨reverse oppression¨ such as ¨reverse racism¨ or
¨reverse sexism.¨ In most cases, there is a clearly observable socio-political
oppressive intersection wherein groups can only oppress downward i.e. they can
only achieve the systemic oppression of other groups that are supposedly of
greater oppression than they are relative to a particular identity.
Understanding the duality that most people harbour allows for inclusion in
left-culture without undermining and failing to recognise either of the oppressed
or oppressor socio-political roles that people exist in. These people are oppressed
power-holders. For instance, it is common and largely possible for a particular
ethnic group to face oppression from another dominant ethnic group while at the
same time persecuting an even greater oppressed ethnic group. This answers the
“99%” question. Indeed, it is possible to identify the ultra-rich people,
multinational corporations and financial institutions as power-holders in relation
to an economically powerless supermajority. However, members of this
supermajority can in their own ways be economic power-holders in relation to
low-wage workers and the poor. More than that, they can be power-holders in
relation to any identity struggle, economic or not. So, the left can simultaneously
fight for the economic freedom of “the 99%” while fighting for the economic
freedom of the working class and all other forms of identity struggles.
To achieve this, there should be an understanding that the fight is against systems
of persecution. In fact, more accurately, the left is indeed fighting against systems
and their power-holders and is not necessarily fighting on behalf of specific
people. This way, there should be a common understanding that all forms of
oppression will be fought against, even if it means that almost all people are being
fought against.
The left would do well to avoid exercises of developing an “oppression hierarchy”
that attempts to rank various identity oppression. The first concern is that
oppressed power-holders might use their power to define the hierarchy. For
instance, black men have succeeded in defining issues of race and class as priority
struggles. Black men indoctrinated in this belief attempt to relegate gender
struggles to secondary concerns to be fought for after a supposed racial victory.
This means that black womxn continue to face oppression. The best way to fight
against this exclusion is to pursue the inclusion of all struggles as simultaneous
concerns.
The second concern should be the relegation of legitimate oppression we will
experience in comparing struggles and the ways in which identity communities
interrelate. Under the apartheid state, it may be sensible to argue that white
womxn benefited greatly from their racial privileged and were elevated to social
positions far greater than black men. However, to undermine the gender struggle
of white womxn from the basis of their racial privilege disobeys the principle of
fighting all oppression. We should, however, question the ways in which white
womxn play a role in furthering any form of oppression, even sexism.
Recognising that these white womxn have developed an exclusionary brand of
feminism that advances their interests whilst ignoring the struggle of womxn of
colour is a progressive step. This is different than undermining the legitimate
gender struggle of white womxn. Instead, we criticise their role in furthering
oppression. For oppressed power-holders, we should both recognise their power
and their oppression. This is the only way we can fight all forms of oppression.
Realistically, it would not be flawed to claim that greater intersection of
oppression is indeed greater oppression. Any differently-abled identity group
generally has to overcomes greater challenges than a similar identity group
without disability. It may seem as if recognising this reality is also recognising a
hierarchy of oppression, but instead, it is more closely defined as recognising the
impact of intersecting oppression. Of course, if a person faces more intersections
of oppression than another, they will experience far greater oppression. This does
not mean that any of the latter group’s persecution is invaluable. The left can only
fight all forms of oppression when it recognises all its forms. This requires
recognition of both the privilege and the persecution of any person.
The left faces a daunting task in identifying itself holistically. Perhaps, what can
be described under left-culture are values of inclusion that do not exclude any
identity from identifying with the left, under the condition that they agree to
fight against all current forms of persecution, in the interests of liberating
persecuted groups. In this view, not everyone is similarly oppressed but all groups
can form part of the left as long as they fight oppression. Moreover, groups must
actively recognise and fight against the ways in which they too oppress.
So, if a person devotes their activism to fight against class and race persecution
but insists on ignoring other forms of persecution, then they should be
considered against a core principle of the left. It should no longer be sufficient
that fighting a single injustice qualifies an individual as a custodian of left values
and the struggle against inequality.
This sort of definition is consistent with the manner in which we define people.
We would define any individual as a killer and criminal if they did indeed kill
someone and were convicted for doing so. We would not excuse this action
because of any of the previous people they did not kill or even any lives they have
saved. Similarly, we should not view an individual as squarely on the left simply
because they fight against some forms of oppression.
Importantly, we should ask questions about their determination to fight
particular struggles whilst ignoring others. What is their motive when they
exclude other forms of oppression? How genuine are their interests in liberation
and equality if they are able to exclude some persecuted groups? What does it
mean to advance singular struggles? Most importantly, should the left condone
oppressed power-holders who act to advance particular oppression.
Maybe, 99% of the world is indeed persecuted by a wealthy micro minority. The
left will fight that. But also, among those 99% are people that commit oppression.
The left must fight this too. To make sense of this, we should re-interpret the
opposition. Our enemy may include the people who commit activities of
oppression, but it is fundamentally the oppression itself and the system it exists
in. For example, one need not be differently-abled to fight against ableism. It is a
struggle that all members of the left should take upon themselves, even if (and
especially when) it means challenging themselves.
An important element of this fight against persecution is the motive. The left
should be interested in liberating the persecuted group. In this view, people that
coincidentally support the same struggle but for differing motives are excluded
from holding true to left-culture. For instance, Donald Trump professed his
support for anti-government protests in Iran, but certainly not for the same
reasons that Iranians were protesting. This also excludes people that use left
struggles for political power or any other form of personal motive (even ideals as
insignificant as performative allyship).
In essence, left-culture should refer to the opposition of
intersectional oppression in the interests of liberating all the various
persecuted.
Another issue arises with the determination of persecution. Here, there should be
an understanding that persecuted groups are people that are excluded from a
privilege relative to their identity. So, if a person belongs to a particular group,
they are immune from that particular oppression. So, a white womxn for
instances is racially privileged but can certainly experience sexism. In this instance,
the left should recognise the oppression she experiences as a result of being a
womxn but must reject any beliefs that she faces racial persecution. Through this
manner, the left can determine clearly which interests it serves and which groups
it aims to liberate.
For Africans, there is a crucial inquiry into what it means to be African and who
should be included in this definition. Notably, along racial lines, white people are
commonly labeled as foreigners. In South Africa, the phrase “1652” has been
attached to white Africans because that year marks the arrival of Jan van Riebeeck
at the Cape.
In many ways, white South Africans are excluded from the persecution
experienced by black South Africans. So, drawing a racial power distinction
between these groups is necessary to address the one-way racial persecution. More
than this, it is sensible to understand racial groups differently in relation to social
power when there are clear power differences. Even within Western thought,
Aristotle argues that "equals should be treated equally and unequals unequally."
So, this principle is even well-understood within Western philosophy. Drawing
from it, there should be no contest on the question of whether black African
should be liberated at the expense of the privilege of white Africans.
However, the question of African identity reaches far deeper than just the present
state of the world. It also seeks to understand if in the future, white Africans can
ever be considered African. Thousands of years from now, 1652 will not be as
recent as it is now. Then, it is likely that white Africans will be readily accepted as
Africans. Regardless of our contemporary efforts, our beliefs will be lost on the
minds of future generations. This means that white Africans will sometime be
considered African. Their ascent to Europe and America in the first instance was
a migration (although under very different and violent conditions). In any case,
the point is that integration between white and black is the future that we tread
toward. In the present, there are already multitudes of multiracial families that
merged white and black. This has created a point of no return. If we attempt to
exclude white Africans from identity in the continent, how do we rationalise the
identity of such relations? If there are children produced from such relations (not
that all of these relations will do so), are these children legitimately African if we
consider one of their parents to not be African? It is a challenging principle to
rationalise and a fruitless one given the future of the continent.
More than this, race is arbitrarily defined. The “Indian” and “Chinese” races exist
commonly simply because the combined population of India and China are above
2.7 Billion people. This is an even greater number when considering that India
has the greatest diaspora in the world. So, these nationalities are considered to be
racial ethnicity simply because there are large quantities of those people. Often,
Asian is also designated a racial group for population and geographic reasons.
Often, racial labels remain to represent social, political and economic differences
that particular race groups experience. The consequence of persecution is the
reliance on racial markers to group particular groups of people who require
liberation. Apart from this, the need to collectivise and create a social identity
encourages the adoption of racial labels. For instance, the “Coloured” racial label
is indigenous to South Africa and is useful for the Coloured population in order
for them to adopt a social identity. In reality, the word “Coloured” could be any
other arbitrary word but it just happens not be. It will remain that word because
it have been given social meaning. This has allowed for the survival of a culture.
This is the same for a label such as Indian.
The race labels, “White” and “Black” are far more descriptive with particular
focus on skin colour in the naming of those racial labels. But they are continued
in usage for the same reason. The phrase “black” is a social term necessary for the
perpetuation of culture for people considered black. But, it is important to
understand that despite the perception that different race groups are biologically
different, there is little scientific basis for a biological distinguishment.
Genetically, the differences between different races are negligible. Racial groups
are only socially distinct. Even then, this is not a natural difference. It is a result of
power imbalances and racial persecution.
So, in a future where our societies have reduced these power imbalances, racial
groups can unite. When that happens, we can finally discard our racial differences
and live in non-racialised societies. Notions of race will remain historical.
However, we must persist with first restructuring racial power in our societies
before attempting racial rainbow ideals. In lieu of this future, we should
understand that our understanding of “African” is temporary.
In fact, we should eventually discard social labels. Notably, their histories are
counter-intuitive. Africans did not name this continent. Black people did not
name their race. A lot of the labels that we elicit pride from are imposed names
that we have adopted.
As Africans, we have accepted two unfortunate realities. The first is that a large
part of our identity is intricately linked to a tragic history. This means that our
identities are slightly misplaces and influenced by non-Africans. Even in the
present, we are yet to realise determination. The second is that we have rejected
parts of our identity because they have been appropriated and recontextualised as
non-African. Unfortunately, aspects of science, medicine, philosophy and other
forms of understanding the world are viewed as Western, even if they are not
entirely sourced from the West. Any African contributions to any of these arts or
sciences has been erased and deemed non-African. Even the name of the continent
has been decided by non-Africans and historical references to the continent by
Africans has been lost.
SA History clarifies the various potential etymology of the name, Africa:23
¨The exact origins of the word ‘Africa’ are contentious, but there is much about
its history that is known. We know that the word ‘Africa’ was first used by the
Romans to describe that part of the Carthaginian Empire which lies in present
day Tunisia. When the Romans conquered Carthage in the second century BCE,
giving them jurisdiction over most of North Africa, they divided North Africa
into multiple provinces, amongst these there were Africa Proconsularis (northern
Tunisia), and Africa Nova (much of present-day Algeria, also called Numidia).
All historians agree that it was the Roman use of the term ‘Africa’ for parts of
Tunisia and Northern Algeria which ultimately, almost 2000 years later, gave the
continent its name. There is however no consensus amongst scholars as to why
the Romans decided to call these provinces ‘Africa’. Over the years a small
number of theories have gained traction.
One of the most popular suggestions for the origins of the term ‘Africa’ is that it
is derived from the Roman name for a tribe living in the northern reaches of
Tunisia, believed to possibly be the Berber people. The Romans variously named
these people ‘Afri’, ‘Afer’ and ‘Ifir’. Some believe that ‘Africa’ is a contraction of
‘Africa terra’, meaning ‘the land of the Afri’. There is, however, no evidence in the
primary sources that the term ‘Africa terra’ was used to describe the region, nor is
there direct evidence that it is from the name ‘Afri’ that the Romans derived the
term ‘Africa’.
In the early sixteenth century the famous medieval traveller and scholar Leo
Africanus (al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazan), who had travelled across most of
North Africa giving detailed accounts of all that he saw there, suggested that the
name ‘Africa’ was derived from the Greek word ‘a-phrike’, meaning ‘without
cold’, or ‘without horror’. In a similar line of thought, other historians have
suggested that the Romans may have derived the name from the Latin word for
sunny or hot, namely ‘aprica’. Where exactly the Romans got the name ‘Africa’
from is however still in dispute.¨
23
SA History. Africa: What’s in a name? 2017.
All of this bears a great sadness for the state of the continent. Our identity has
been branded upon us and we have reached a point where it is unthinkable to
detach that brand, the history associated with it or even the future it creates.
What we can do as Africans is control the narrative of our labels and wear that
narrative proudly. However, we should also be welcoming of a future where the
way we understand our identity is altered by the different social orientation,
wherein black people are liberated.
African is black, for now. The Africa of the future is for all.
A final issue that must be addressed when investigating the identity of the left is
the tendency for identity erasure. If participating in leftculture is predominantly
about the struggle for liberation, then heroes of the left should represent people
whose objective was liberation. Conversely, the left has erased entire identity
groups from acknowledgement. This also creates a cycle of erasure because the
particular identities that are glorified receive more legitimacy in the present which
makes them more likely to become political leaders. For instance, there is a
common perception that black men liberated the continent of Africa. Prominent
Pan-African political leaders and philosophers are predominantly black men.
When this occurs, an illusion is drawn about the role of womxn in the struggles of
the African continent. The truth is obscured and the persecution against womxn
is maintained.
In Africa, the mid-20th century marked a great struggle for liberation and
independence from various imperial powers. However, across the African
continent, black men have been the greatest beneficiaries of liberation and have
continued persecution against black womxn.
In recent times, these liberation movements have received immense criticism for
the authoritarian nature of their post-independence states. Much less received is
the valid criticism of the gender regressiveness of these liberation movements.
With no exception, the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) – responsible
for Eritrean independence from Ethiopia in 1991, was marred by the toxic
patriarchy synonymous with African liberation. From within this environment,
powerful womxn were still able to emerge as a tough force fighting against the
both the Ethiopians they were fighting against and the patriarchal Eritreans they
were fighting for.
The cession of Eritrea by Ethiopia monarch Haile Selassie was supported by the
Allied powers (notably the United States and the United Kingdom) in response to
Ethiopia’s aid during World War II. The Eritreans, however, requested by the
United Nations to recognise their independence. Instead, the United Nations
allowed the annexation. What ensued were three decades of conflict in the
Eritrean War of Independence.
The EPLF would emerge victoriously and re-establish Eritrea as a sovereign
nation. However, history regularly erases the significant efforts of thousands of
Eritrean womxn who fought on the frontlines of the independence struggle. The
EPLF adopted equality measures which led to 30% of the movement being
comprised of womxn fighters.
Unlike other struggles where womxn are regulated to assistive roles, womxn in the
EPLF were bona fide struggle fighters who formed part of both the armed
struggle and the intellectual political education. In essence, womxn were
instrumental to the liberation of Eritrea.
However, post-independence Eritrea has not equated the gender equality of the
struggle. The efforts of womxn are sufficiently ignored, undervalued and erased
by the international community. Moreover, Eritrea is among the worst nations in
the world for gender equity.
The Eritrean Independence struggle was uniquely fought against fellow Africans.
Its success liberated a small African nation and its identity. However, the battle
between Africans wages on as African men continue to perpetuate persecution
against African womxn.
The left are all who seek liberation. The left needs to recognise liberation as its
sole identifier. Otherwise, the left will maintain its erasure and persecution of the
people who have fought great struggles.
Where is the left? How can it gather?
The answer to the manner in which the left can collectivise will not be discussed
in length here. Great consideration should be given to the power of conscious
civic engagement and education. The left can organise through informal activism
or formal organisations and continue to spread ideas of progress. Presently, in
South Africa, the left mostly exists through activist NGOs such as Section 27,
Equal Education, Treatment Action Campaign, Social Justice Coalition, Ndifuna
Kwazi, GroundUp, Amandla.mobi and more. Historically, the left has managed
to organise behind charismatic political leaders who have rallied multitudes of
people behind a progressive agenda.
Apart from the organisations -- which can themselves sink into the interests of
power-holders -- the left can self-organise. The left can and should always exist in
a state of rebellious organisation against the masters of our societies. Even
sporadic, spontaneous and unorganised resistance is crucial. It protects the left
from the problems existent in strict formal organisations -- hierarchies, influence
from the power-holders and organisational collapse. In this sense, continuous
formal and informal organisation operate simultaneously to achieve the unison
end of liberation. One without the other is too incomplete for success. The left
does indeed need formal power for legitimacy but it needs informal power for the
accountability which steers the formal leaders in the adequate direction of the
common people's interests.
However, these sort of arrangements are only possible in liberal democracies that
protect the various freedoms required for association, movement, speech and
campaign. In fact, in the context of a democracy, the left simply needs to create a
populist campaign centered behind an accepted and charismatic leader to ascend
to power.
Opponents of current norms often fight the throne from outside of the castle.
They position themselves outside of decision-making systems and attempt to
oppose them from a powerless position. In many ways, this is the fault of the
privileged power-holders who act to close off any opportunity for the powerless
to ascend to power. However, there is an inherent opportunity for people to
ascend to political power in democracies.
If more members of the left opted to engage with political process and fight for
power, persecuted groups could witness greater levels of progress. Instead, the
political domain of democracies are saturated by centrists and the political right.
The left needs to stop trusting centrists and begin to fight for the throne from
within the castle. If the left refuses to sit in institutional governing bodies,
compete in democratic elections and ascend to positions of prominence, it will be
incapable of achieving progress.
The left youth of the latter 20th century in Europe and North America may have
never predicted that they would find themselves in election campaigns between
centrists and the extreme political right. Perhaps, the left youth disengaged with
the political system and have allowed for the throne to be fought between groups
that have little interest in the liberation of people. Simply, the left within
democracies need to start engaging and fighting for power.
In non-democratic contexts where the left are impaired from gathering and
engaging in socio-political institutions, it is tempting to advise revolutionary
dissent. In fact, acts of violence, civil disobedience and intolerance can be excused
when a persecuted group fights for liberation.
However, careful attention must be paid to the day after the revolution. Often
revolutions end where they begin - in tyranny. There should be strong
considerations for how the state will be restructured and who will hold
decision-making power. Else, the state can return to its oppressive nature against
the same group or to a different identity group. This should not be viewed as
victory.
In these contexts, the left should gather to plan power-grabbing, whether through
revolution or not. For all their value, the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street
were not followed with significant shifts of power from economic or political
elites to persecuted people. These actions were excellent examples of collectivised
action but not of power-grabbing and reformation. It is not enough for the left to
gather in opposition, it must prepare to ascend to power. Certainly, the ordeal of
gaining power is no simple task. In fact, power-holders will act to prevent the
shift of power by concentrating it. Without the ability to decentralise this power,
the left will struggle severely to gain it. More than this, without popular support
(highly unlikely under current conditions), the left will struggle to gain
revolutionary pressure to achieve progress. This discourse shall not elaborate
exclusively on claiming power, however, it is crucial to recognise the need to try.
Gaining political power and decentralising the state are the first steps toward
claiming power. In the least, it is crucial for the left to recognise the necessity of
redistributing power to achieve progress and a holistic restructuring of our
societies.
Noticeably, people within liberal democracies have interpreted the nature of their
political systems similarly to authoritarian contexts. This means, they seek to
voice their concerns or frustrations, advance their interests and collectives
through revolutionary means. Noticeably the Occupy Wall Street movement in
the earlier stage of the present decade and the Black Lives Matter movement in
the latter stage. These movements understand the political system as an enforcer
of persecution and oppose it as such. Moreover, they seek to remind people that
liberal democracies are vaguely similar in effect to authoritarian states with
respect to power concentration and inability for democratic masses to
significantly engage in political process or influence the socio-economic condition
of their country.
Revolutionary activities within liberal democracies are in no way problematic,
however, there is a significant difference between an authoritarian oppressive
state and persecution within a liberal democracy - the latter does create a real
opportunity for persecuted groups to ascend to power. An opportunity is not a
certainty, but it should not be underestimated. It is crucial that any left
movement interested in progress utilise these mechanisms to ascend to power.
Consider the third largest political party in South Africa (currently), the
Economic Freedom Fighters, who responded to a racist advertisement by Swedish
retailer H&M by raiding and disrupting its storefronts in major South African
cities. Certainly, they claim this as a necessary action to oppose not just the racial
concerns of the retailer but the nature of large multinational corporations
altogether. In fact, the party strongly believes that such multinationals should be
barred or inhibited from operating freely within the country (understandably)
when their activities cause worker exploitation and other externalities. Although
they do engage in revolutionary disruptive activity, they also simultaneously
compete in national, provincial and municipal elections. They aim primarily to
ascend to political power to carry through their progressive agenda. This is the
adequate strategy for left organisations. They must pursue power.
In history, similar revolutions have created similar minimum goals. Revolutions
from the 18th till the 20th century were primarily aimed at ascension to political
power and not solely opposition to oppression. It is in no doubt inherently good
to oppose persecution, but effective opposition requires political power. So,
revolutionary movements in democracies should engage with democratic process.
For all its worth, Occupy Wall Street merely achieved situational disruption. The
´system´ has assuredly returned to its usual minority concentration of power of
wealth, with little resistance.
The left needs to cease a deliberate strategy to principally exclude itself from
political systems in protest of those systems. It must begin to engage with them if
it wishes to truly oppose persecution. Again, it is not enough for the left to gather
in opposition, it must prepare to ascend to power.
What is the left? How can it reform?
Internally, organised movements can easily corrode. Popular charismatic leaders
do not inherently or necessarily act in the interests of people. Even worse,
organisations are often not even controlled by popular charismatic leaders, but
instead by a political elite. The interests of this elite can easily be incongruent
with the interests of people. For instance, a worker union should ideally serve the
interests of workers, but if the political elite that ascends to decision-making
power colludes with the economic power (i.e. financial institutions, corporations
and employers), the worker union will certainly not act in the interest of workers.
This is a central and inherent problem that arises with strict hierarchical
organised movements. People with a malevolent disposition for power and the
existing resource to pursue that interest ultimately end in positions of power
within progressive movements. These organised movements will be led by the
elite, which means they will not be led in the direction of its members´ interests. A
similar occurrence was observed during the early days of organised feminist
movements wherein an interpretation of feminism was incoherent to the context
of womxn of colour.
So, the feminist response was to encourage a revised interpretation of feminism
and fight against the hierarchical evolution of the movement. Currently, there is
no feminist equivalent to a workers union. Instead, there exist multitudes of
organisations, governmental or not, which advance gender equity. So, certainly an
organised movement will need to exist and certainly there will be positions of
power within that organised movement. However, at no point should an identity
struggle itself create a hierarchy.
Pumla Dineo Gqola writes that a ¨writing women is a rioting women¨ and in this
attitude, there should be an understanding of equity between participants in any
identity struggle, even if some of those participants ascend to political power. A
sure strategy to ensure this is for participants of a struggle to nominate and elect
its leaders, instead of simply electing between leaders nominated through other
processes. Simply, giving democratic power to participants of a movement serves
to enable them to choose representatives who act in their interest.
Hierarchies can also be challenged through the spread of struggle consciousness. If
people are more aware of the greater struggle against particular forms of
oppression, they can gauge how their leaders are opposing those persecutions and
the extent of their success. Moreover, they will be empowered to hold their
leaders accountable based on their resistance to oppression, instead of vague
rhetoric, identity affiliation, future-based promises or progress on immediate
concerns.
Externally, the reformation of the left is challenging. To ascend to political power,
the left requires a democratic endorsement. This is challenging when liberal
democracies work to limit the influence people truly have over democratic
process. For instance, people generally only elect between nominated leaders and
play little role in the nomination process. Furthermore, low levels of civic
education create an ignorance for ways of participating in democratic process.
People that are more likely to support left candidates (i.e. youth) are most
excluded from democratic process and deliberately so.
It is possible to ¨wake up the left¨ as Bernie Sanders achieved in his memorable
campaign for presidential nomination in the Democratic Party. However,
extensive campaigning requires enormous economic capital. The extent of this
will only be achieved in massive campaigns such as Sanders´ campaign but not
necessarily for grassroots campaigning, especially for non-election issues or in
poorer nations. Also, there is the reality that economically-supported civic
campaigns do not ensure success. The left Green Party in the United States,
although growing, is certainly far from the level of support it should be
accumulating. This is certainly due to the primal challenge facing left movements
- the centre.
Centrists have become the primary opponents of the political right. People with
supposedly left-wing views opt to support the safe, innocent view of the centrists
and grant them political backing. It seems tempting to support a progressive
unifying candidate over a candidate with radical intention. In France, Emmanuel
Macron was framed as the core challenger to the far-right, Marine le Pen.
Certainly, his manifesto was progressive in the context of immediate concerns but
it included among others, a measure to cut corporate tax from 33% to 25% and
raise spending on defense. Meanwhile, the left candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon
was calling for a revision of the French constitution, a citizen revolution and
100% taxation for the wealthy. But in the present system, the political ideologies
at conflict were not le Pen´s against Mélenchon´s. The election became a conflict
of the far-right and the centre, which is consequentially the right. People were
choosing between worsening existing hierarchies and merely tolerating their
continuation.
In reality, centrists are certainly more progressive than the right. However, they
are obviously and intuitively not as progressive or transformative as the left. But
oddly, they have become synonymous with how we currently define progress. So,
it is not enough to simply have more of the left compete in political process, the
left needs to also seek to redefine the common understanding of progress.
Without a prior spread of struggle conscious, the left will fail to win elections.
Not too long ago, the guiding voices of the modern left-wing, even liberal
thought, espoused the values of the current minority left. Noam Chomsky´s
thoughts in Optimism over Despair elaborate:
The prevailing situation reminds us of the words of America's leading
twentieth-century social philosopher, John Dewey, much of whose work
focused on democracy and its failures and promise. Dewey deplored the
domination by ¨business for private profit through private control
banking, land, industry, reinforced by command of press, press agents and
other means of publicity and propaganda” and recognised that ¨power
today resides in control of the means of production, exchange, publicity,
transportation and communication. Whoever owns them rules the life of
the country,¨ even if democratic forms remain. Until those institutions are
in the hands of the public, he continued, politics will remain ¨the shadow
cast on society by big business.¨ This was not a voice from the marginalized
far left, but from the mainstream of liberal thought.24
Left liberalism has shifted from its early revisionist shouting roots to become a
great whisper seducing masses of people to abandon real concerns for the societies
we live in and accept slight social measures that shadow the real intentions of
governments to advance large corporate-friendly measures. Centrism, it would
seem, benefits the established power holders and will continue to do so. However,
the public opinion of centrists is antithetical to their nature. People earnestly
believe that the messages of hope and unity preached in their rhetoric will carry
through to policies that improve their societies. Very unfortunate is the
disappointment awaiting these people.
However, most unfortunate is that people will continue to trust centrists to bring
reform and the earnest left will, as a result, weaken. People opt to grant power to
those that will act against their interests rather than those that would revise
societies to serve their interests. This is purely because ‘moderate’ centrist
power-holders have shaped the discourse of progress and have spread a
consciousness of immediate concerns. The conscientisation that the marginalised
left often express necessity for is fiercely conducted by centrists. If anything, it is
because the centrists have widely spread their beliefs that they have gained
significant support.
Through early modern history, centrist progress was laughable. The people
demanded revolution and holistic restructuring of their societies. Notably,
revolutions against power-holders occured in the latter 18th century America,
France and Haiti. The early 20th century marked communist revolutions. The
mid-century period was saturated with independence struggles in colonies.
However, by the latter end of the 20th century, the world started to redefine
progress in a centrist manner. The early 21st century has rejected the idea of
24
Chronis Polychroniou. Optimism over Despair. 2017.
revolution. Occasionally, there has been collective action to depose power such as
the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street. However, in general, we live in a
centrist world. We live in a context of little progress and no revolution.
Certainly, we do not need to return to the same kind of violent revolution to
restructure our societies. A presidential candidate calling for holistic restructuring
through democratic means is certainly the kind of progress that the world
requires. We have rejected revolution, but we need not reject holistic
restructuring. It is no secret that the world is fragmented and still suffers under
persecution. Certainly, reformation is just as necessary now as it has always been
through history. Unlike in the past, we have available to us liberal democracies
which can be used to produce that transformation.
UNIQUE STRUGGLES
People have unique experiences of the world relative to their environment and
identity. In fact, particular general environments are considered aspects of our
identity. Often, identity groups can be considered to have unique collective
experiences. Some identity groups hold power and will, therefore, possess
collective and individual privileges while some identity groups will be relatively
less powerful and therefore encounter collective and individual persecution.
Privilege and persecution cannot be opted in or out of. It is a determined
experience that arises directly from social power structures. More than this, our
experiences stem directly from our power or privilege. Therefore, the way we
experience the world is dependent on our identity. More than that, it will affect
our living, our understanding of the world and the actions we take relative to the
world around us.
Some struggles will be unique to particular identities. For instance, there are
unique struggles experienced by transgender individuals in many aspects of living
within cisgendered norms. There is a struggle for hormone treatment, the use of
bathroom amenities, the costs of gender affirmation surgery, engagement with
sport etc. Often, these are unique struggles. The entire left should rally behind
these unique struggles because the unique liberation of each individual must be
achieved together with the collective struggle for liberation, else we cannot claim
that all people have been liberated. In fact, the unique struggles are the most
difficult to lobby support for. This is because experience of these issues are
limited to the members of that particular identity group.
So, people within the left must commit to educate themselves on the various
unique struggles that they may be ignorant of. We should ask ourselves, what are
the struggles of the sex worker? What are the struggles of the differently-abled?
What are the struggles of the young? It is only when we fight for the struggles of
all that we will liberate all. However, this attempt to understand the struggles of
identity groups should not evolve into consuming the advocacy space for these
issues. The role of the ally is to assist movements, not to try lead movements. The
unique struggles of identity groups belong to them. So, the space to advocate
liberation belong to them too. In the community of the disabled, a mantra has
developed which rings, “nothing about us without us.” This summarises well the
role of the ally in unique identity issues.
Socially and politically conscious people who have not undergone the experience
of particular persecutions can indeed claim to have learned, observed and
sympathised with those experiences. They can also possess a significant awareness
of any of the unexperienced persecutions and ways to fight against them. In fact,
(and on the contrary) not all people who face persecution are consciously aware of
the nature of that persecution and how to fight against it. Some persecuted people
may even ironically advocate their own oppression and dogmatically support their
oppressors. We do not have to defend these particular members of the identity
group. They are quite obviously not the people that should own their identity
movements.
Instead, we have to understand why the conscious members of an identity have
full ownership over movements related to that identity. Even if we claim to
understand unique struggle and ways to fight against it, the nature and ownership
of any struggle belongs to the group who experiences the issues. Three things
motivate this idea – experiential motive, inherency and power balance.
Experiential Motive
Something is said to be experiential when it is experienced or observed. However,
there is a difference between the motivations for acting when oppression is
experienced and when oppression is observed.
First, an observer has the opportunity to opt-out of activism without any negative
consequence to their lived experience. This means that at any moment, there is a
risk. Already, it is justified to be unwilling to take this risk.
But more than this, I argue that this does certainly occur. People who observe
persecution but do not experience it will certainly play the dual role of an ally to
the persecuted and an ally to the persecutor. They will allow their fellow
privileged identities to persecute in certain circumstances. Perhaps, occasionally,
they will complain about the rape joke or the ethnic slur, but in general,
privileged people forgive the sins of their fellow identity group. But choosing to
support both the persecuted and the privilege is in consequence supporting the
privileged, whose power starts off greater than the persecuted and remains greater
when the observer grants both groups power equally.
So, for instance, ‘all men are trash’ regardless of whether they are allies. This
means they should have no ownership over womxn empowerment because they
are included in the group that must be fought against. In this view, the reason a
privileged identity group should have no say over a movement of a persecuted
group is that the privileged people are all inherent antagonists of that movement.
Conversely, a motive for activism that is developed directly from experience and
identity can never be attached, regardless of environment and scenario. The
experience and identity remain with the persecuted group and consistently
influences them. This means, there is less risk of opting out and there is little
opportunity to support the privileged group. These are the only people who will
always have the motive of the movement in mind.
There is a difference between a motive drawn from one’s experiences and identity
and a motive drawn from observation and sympathy. Only one of these motives
holds.
Inherency & Power Balance
We must understand what a movement is. A movement is not simply a set of
intended goals to achieve. A movement should certainly be concerned with
consequence, especially with ensuring the liberation of persecuted groups as its
ultimate outcome.
However, a movement should also be concerned with the process. Certainly, there
is constant debate about whether ends justify means. This is because means are
important for legitimacy. A movement gains legitimacy through its members
belonging to the persecuted community.
Moreover, a movement’s mandate should stem from that community as well. If
the mandate from that community is supposedly objectively inferior to the
mandate of non-members (a situation I find unlikely), then so be it. The point is
not to reach a particular goal. The point is to reach that goal through the activities
of a particular identity group. Think of a movement as a representative group,
like a nation-state’s government is supposedly a representation of the country’s
people. If a country listened to foreign advice about activities, the people of that
country would likely deny that agenda. Moreover, a country is supposed to accept
the mandate given to it by its people. Similarly, a movement must accept the
mandate of the identity group it serves over the mandate of any foreign group or
observer group.
Most importantly, the value of the goal is determined by its process. An
illegitimate process means the achieved goals will be of a low-value. Whereas, if
the mandate arises from the persecuted group and their views and beliefs are
represented in the movement’s activities then the consequences are of high value
to those persecuted groups.
In reality, an observer is part of the privileged community. This means they must
lose power to achieve equality between the presently-privileged and
presently-persecuted. They cannot lose this power if they have influence over the
process of transformation. The privileged must engage with the world and their
communities surely but when they start to dictate activities, they must
understand that such an action does not improve the power imbalance. If
anything, these activities may worsen the power imbalance.
A movement aims to also achieve a power balance between the privileged and
persecuted. It cannot do this unless only persecuted groups are members who
make strategic decisions and push the movement forward. The consequence of
this is fighting against the power imbalance. If someone has power in any relation,
they will deliberately or inadvertently establish dominance if they are too
assertive. In fact, just having greater social power and being in the room means
they take up more space. The power balance can never be solved by the people
that create and benefit from it.
People with power cannot take it away from themselves. They can only surrender
it to be taken away by the persecuted.
The role of the ally is to listen. Allies should do what is suggested by the
movement. Continue fighting within one’s own spaces. Continue fighting in any
space. However, the ally should not try to claim the movement, overrule the
suggestions of the legitimate identity groups or enforce their own understanding
of the movement’s “best way forward” on the movement.
A movement must be owned by the identities it affects. They have the correct
unremovable motive, legitimacy and ability to break down power. The lived
experience of identity groups is theirs to express and fight against.
PROVING PERSECUTION
Oddly, the left finds itself having to prove the existence of persecution. For some,
it may seem clear that there are objective differences between the privileged and
persecuted. Intiutively, our societies are certainly not egalitarian and this should
be easily observable by anyone, especially the persecuted themselves.
Historical forms of oppression are extreme forms of visible persecution. For
instance, slavery existed as a grossly violent, open and noticeable oppression. The
political rhetoric surrounding its practice was openly dehumanising. There
existed slave trade through public markets, an active multinational exchange and
scenes of obsessive brutality. To deny this oppression would be ludicrous.
Similarly, common incidents of murdering persecuted groups such as the
differently-abled and homosexuals and related brutalisation was undeniable.
Contemporarily, persecution is secretly practiced through seemingly democratic
institutions, laws and ‘acceptable’ activities. Even in observable cases, such as the
police indiscriminately killing African Americans, the left struggles to convince
people that persecution persists. There is a wide perception that the era of
democratisation has conquered historical injustice. In countries, where
persecution remains easily observable, the international community simply
concurs that the country has not completed its democratic project.
Even in the most socially advanced liberal democracies, power is concentrated
among the privilege. The current standard for democracy is laughably inadequate.
In fact, there can be a convincing claim that true democracy barely exists in the
current era. So, the perception that democratisation can challenge injustice is not
in itself flawed. The perception that democratisation has truly occurred certainly
is.
In South Africa, statistics are clear about the reality of persecution. The average
income of black South Africans is R69 000 while the average income of white
South Africans is R380 000. Only 3% of Black youth between the age of 18 and
29 attend university while 19% of white youth are enrolled. 47.1% of South
Africans live below the Lower-Bound Poverty Line (R758 per month) while only
0.4% of white South Africans are below that same line. Meanwhile, 62% of Black
South Africans are below the Upper-Bound Poverty Line in relation to just 1% of
white South Africans.25
The problem lies with the centre. Centrist positioning convinces people that our
societies have progressed past gross persecution. Recall that centrists support
existing hierarchies. This means that they must defend their existence. So, they
spread the notions that current hierarchies are natural. People are led to believe
that it is normal to live under a kapitalist system that undermines their
contributions and forces them to struggle. The notion “That’s just life”
summarises the centrist justification for the systems of persecution. People are
taught there is a lack of an alternative system to live under. So, they accept the
underlying persecution they face and aim to create improvement from within that
hierarchy.
The “It’s the best system we’ve got” is a deliberate lie. The falsehood is not that
ideal democracy is a good which amounts to the most equal and liberating
political system. The lie is that we are currently living in democracy. Centrist
rhetoric paints a liberated destination over the current struggling journey. Worse
25
Stats SA. Poverty Trends in South Africa. 2017.
than this, it denies people the opportunity to consider a reality where they are
truly free from oppressive chains and fight for its achievement.
We are indeed persecuted by present social, economic and political systems. A
recent Oxfam study revealed that 82% of the wealth accumulated in 2017 was
earned by the richest 1% of the world. Meanwhile, the bottom 50% gained no
wealth.26 As shocking as this sounds, it should not shock. The reality is that
persecution persists. Similarly, the #MeToo campaign has surprised populations
of people who were largely ignorant of wide-spread sexual misconduct in all
spheres of liberal democratic societies. I am reminded by the groups of men at a
local university who laughed off new safety measures that were being lobbied for
with the statement, “But, this campus is safe. There is no rape at this university.”
On that same day, a womxn was assaulted.
The perception of a lack of persecution is engineered by the power-holders who
have every incentive to hide reality. In South Africa, rainbowism has created a
misjudgement of present racial inequality (a dangerous assessment which is
actively opposing liberation.) The extent of its miseducation of people has created
doctrines of “reverse racism” whereby people earnestly believe that people of
colour possess the existent malevolence and opportunity to persecute white
people. People earnestly believe that the persecuted globe has achieved liberation.
In truth, it is not yet uhuru.
More than this, efforts to fight against persecution will be condemned. The
persecuted globe cannot be rescued from the chains of power-holders, because
they do not recognise the necessity of a fight. After all, if one believed they were
free, what would they fight for? The marginalised few that continue to pursue
freedom are largely ridiculed by both their immediate peers and the overarching
international community.
Numerously thus far, I have stressed the need to spread a struggle consciousness
among the persecuted. Presently, there seems to be no other reasonable method to
reveal the necessity to continue fighting for freedom than to give people the
conscious tools to realise this need for themselves. Their chains are mind-forged
and will be cast off by their mental faculty. In this sense, there is no burden to
26
Max Lawson. Reward Work, Not Wealth. 2018.
prove persecution. People will liberate themselves and then fight to liberate their
immediate context. Collectively, people will liberate the world.
LIBERATING LIBERALISM
Most disappointing is the fact that early significant left activist figures were
certainly not staunch centrists. 20th century liberalism believed strongly in the
existence of persecution and held clear distinctions between the privileged and the
persecuted. Moreover, it aimed to dismantle existing political, social and
economic systems and restructure their societies. Liberalism was not always as
antithetical to the opinion that there is a core ideological rot which creates
symptoms of persecution. Most importantly, they recognised the importance of a
significantly different egalitarian system. Present liberalism has long abandoned
its roots and continues to separate itself from reality.
Consider the iconic “I Have A Dream” speech where Martin Luther King Jr relays
his vision for a restructured American society. In the beginning of this speech, he
refers to the ideological roots of the 20th century treatment of black people in the
US:
One hundred years later the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the
manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred
years later the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a
vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later the Negro is
still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in
exile in his own land. So we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful
condition.27
Notice that Luther King Jr. explains the persecution as caused by “manacles of
segregation and the chains of discrimination.” In the present day, this sort of
ideological language would be considered radical. He identifies the core
ideological root of the problem. For him, the problem is not an issue of
pragmatics or policy. He raises a concern with the design of the society. He
understands that there is a deliberate oppression which causes the ostracisation of
black people to be exiled and languished.
27
Martin Luther King Jr. I Have a Dream. 1963.
Also, notice his clear recognition of the privileged and the persecuted. He claims
that black people were on a “lonely island of poverty” signifying their persecution
among a “vast ocean of material prosperity” highlighting the privilege of white
people. Quite critically, he understood there were power-holders, they were
privileged and they were persecuted. This has not changed.
Luther King Jr. did call for unity and multiracial integration, but this was his
dream for the future, not his understanding of the present. He concludes his
speech by calling for freedom to ring for all and the integration of conflicting
groups singing “Free at last.” This is oddly interpreted to mean we should hold
hands in the present. Clearly, he is hoping that in the future, such a possibility can
exist.
He was dreaming of unity between persecuted and privileged groups in a future
where both descriptors no longer existed. He was in no way, pursuing the
acceptance of existing hierarchies in an attempt to integrate. Present-day centrists
misinterpret integration. It must follow after the restructuring of our societies.
If we revisit Marx's Critique of Political Economy, he explains the following
In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish
between the material transformation of the economic conditions of
production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science,
and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic – in short,
ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight
it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about
himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its
consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained
from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between
the social forces of production and the relations of production.28
Marx clarifies a difference between the pragmatic material change that concerns
our modern day politics and the ideological transformation which we should
pursue. Centrists have concentrated on distracting our pursuit from an
ideological struggle to a pragmatic affair.
28
Karl Marx. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. 1859.
Understand that our conscious desire for transformation is driven by the reality
of persecution. Those that deny transformation, deny the ability for liberation.
Mostly, they judge our transformation by its consciousness instead of by the
natural contradictions of material life.
In essence, to reform internally, the left needs to carefully consider its
leaders. To reform externally, the left needs to defeat more than just the
right - it needs to defeat the centrist.
For regular people interested in their progress and the progress of their societies,
strongly consider the outcomes of the current democratic project. Consider that
significant change has been surely repressed and fought back against. Consider
that power is still concentrated in the groups that have every interest to advance
oppression. Centrists, in their part, have played a role in maintaining this status.
It is time to abandon the centre and assist in the reformation of the left. If we are
to ever experience liberation, it will require people to simply collectivise through a
political formation that understands, supports and advances the interest to cast
off their chains.
HOW TO START FIGHTING
This discourse focuses primarily on establishing the existence of a great problem
in our current societies - the power of the masters and the structural persecution
that democracies are unable to unhinge. Additionally, it has hoped to establish
definite ideas for improving our democracies, removing power from the masters
and liberating the common people. The spread of a solution to this great problem
is necessary. However, we must dedicate ourselves to developing an adequate
understanding of the problem prior to developing solutions. Otherwise, we will
find ourselves misguided and unable to develop a strong alternative to the status
quo. We may develop yet against the catastrophic failures of 20th century
communism.
But, as an introductory thought to solving this great problem, let us consider
transformative policy as an interim measure to advance the interests of the
common people. By this I mean, reforming the systems of education, healthcare,
tax, housing, justice, policing, immigration and more. It may require us to review
laws, structures and approaches to each of these parts of our governance policies.
In this, we should create a transformative left agenda which carries through policy
positions and restructures specific sectors of our societies.
This should start with the most achievable policy victories. The low-lying fruit
should be speedily picked, with the momentum from these victories inspiring
even greater transformation. In the same interview for Big Think, Slavoj Zizek
recommends this approach, expressing, in part, the following:
“My advice would be--because I don't have simple answers--two things: (a)
precisely to start thinking. Don't get caught into this pseudo-activist
pressure. Do something. Let’s do it, and so on. So, no, the time is to think.
I even provoked some of the leftist friends when I told them that if the
famous Marxist formula was, “Philosophers have only interpreted the
world; the time is to change it” . . . thesis 11 on Feuerbach. . . that maybe
today we should say, “In the twentieth century, we maybe tried to change
the world too quickly. The time is to interpret it again, to start thinking.”
Second thing, I’m not saying people are suffering, enduring horrible
things, that we should just sit and think, but we should be very careful
what we do. Here, let me give you a surprising example. I think that,
okay, it’s so fashionable today to be disappointed at President Obama, of
course, but sometimes I’m a little bit shocked by this disappointment
because what did the people expect, that he will introduce socialism in
United States or what? But for example, the ongoing universal health care
debate is an important one. This is a great thing. Why? Because, on the
one hand, this debate which taxes the very roots of ordinary American
ideology, you know, freedom of choice, states wants to take freedom from us
and so on. I think this freedom of choice that Republicans attacking
Obama are using, its pure ideology. But at the same time, universal
health care is not some crazy, radically leftist notion. It’s something that
exists all around and functions basically relatively well--Canada, most of
Western European countries.29
So, certainly, whilst we develop a plan for the holistic restructuring of our
societies, we can challenge the structure of its parts.
29
Big Think. Don't Act. Just Think. 2012
However, we should be careful in approaching non-holistic approaches.
Recognise that existing power-holders will act to reinforce their power when
challenged. So, opposing a structural issue without defeating it may worsen its
persecution. Consider, the attempt to pursue higher wages within a kapitalist
market economy. Employers, particularly corporations, might respond by laying
off some workers and marginally increasing the wages of the remaining. This
leaves the workers in general, worse-off. The problem was not the pursuit of
higher wages, but the inability to defeat the structural issues exploiting workers in
the first instance. Because of this, the exploitation of workers doubled down in
response to the challenge of higher wages, because it had the power to do so.
Challenges to power that are unsuccessful in defeating that power actually
strengthen it.
So, when protesters mark graffiti on walls, throw faeces around, turn over
dustbins and raid buildings, they may achieve some level of transformative
activism. However, impoverished black workers are summoned to clean up the
mess. This is because the structural injustice is not successfully challenged by this
form of protest, so the structure doubles down by sending black workers to toil.
The problem, again, is not with the activism but instead because the activism is
unsuccessful in disestablishing structures.
So, an approach that targets persecution, especially if it targets a part of society
instead of a holistic society, should be wary of its approach and certain that it will
succeed in removing a structural problem. Otherwise, that structure will simply
strengthen and leave the common people worse off.
Crucially, an approach is meaningless without people. A core concern for any
reformer is to influence a community of people to collectivise. Movements should
begin from root-level and develop upward. Understandably, this is difficult to
achieve. But, it remains worthy to pursue. If movements do not start from the
interests of the common people, they certainly will not end with their interests.
Currently, the common people trust very privileged political actors to bring
structural changes on their behalf. The entire system of representative
democracies convinces the common people that political contests are about their
interests and representatives are most concerned with them. This perception is
deliberately misleading. Often, representatives are removed from the common
people. An approach to achieve justice and equity requires people to remain
directly assimilated with the common people.
MINIMUM GOALS
The sustainability of these bottom-up campaigns are threatened by many very real
challenges. The first is that people without capital struggle to sustain campaigns
against people with capital. The second issue is that the flatness of these
campaigns create power uncertainties which transform into power conflict.
People naturally aspire for power so flat structures eventually devolve into
hierarchies. These are serious concerns that leftist campaigns are still attempting
to solve. In the interim, a strong measure against these internal issues is to develop
campaigns around early victories and minimum goals.
This means that the campaign can maintain its momentum through an early
victory which inspires people to continue working toward the larger goal. With
some level of success, people will remain motivated. The campaign would also
have achieved something meaningful for the common people. Early victories can
also attract capital and support from people who have observed the capacity for
the campaign to succeed. Moreover, what once seemed impossible might seem
possible once the campaign shatters cynic perceptions of liberation. In many
ways, creating minimum goals and achieving them is necessary for the survival of
a campaign.
Goal-oriented campaigns also weed out political opportunists and power-hungry
popularists. This is because the campaign becomes centered around outcomes and
not promises or political-speak. So, political leaders who do not achieve
meaningful change have no legitimacy in the movement. Only people who work
for the common people and achieve their interests in the minimum will be trusted
to achieve their interests for the maximum.
Importantly, there is a distinction between a minimum goal and an immediate
goal. Immediate objectives are not always (in fact, usually not) components of a
wider struggle. They do not move a campaign closer to its ultimate goal. They are
simply issues which must also be resolved. We should overcome immediate
material circumstance, but at the same time, we should dismantle the root cause
of our persecution and possible future persecution. Else, we will always focus on
how we can feed ourselves today just to be hungry again tomorrow. Using this
analogy, a minimum goal might be procuring a fishing rod or fertile soil. These
can be used as mechanisms for feeding people. An immediate goal, such as
providing fish and bread should never grant a leader legitimacy and will rarely
sustain a movement for longer than it takes to become hungry again.
WHAT ABOUT THE REST OF THE WORLD?
Examples in this text have been greatly based on US and they will continue to be,
reasonably. Centrism and the myth of democracy is particularly strong in this
region. Moreover, criticisms of democracy in other regions in the world are easily
countered with the claim that they are not practicing democracy correctly. The
need to reform democracy is actually a far more pressing need in regions in Africa,
Africa, Asia, East Europe and South America. Already, these countries are far
more left-leaning. However, there are tendencies of neoliberalism and optic power
which must be rooted out. The dominant democracies, however, remain
problematic democracies which should similarly strive for real power and an
invigorated leftculture.
VIOLENCE
Certainly, non-violent resistance is a beautiful, powerful amd glorified ideal. With
regard to stability, it increases the chances for the long-term prevailing of peace.
However, it is unbecoming to condemn violent protest by oppressed groups when
it is targeted against groups of power. Mostly, that violence is a consequence of
persecution. The violence would not have existed without pre-existing
oppression. Importantly, it is choosing sides. It remains true that condemning
violence by persecuted groups assists groups with power. It creates social
perceptions that persecuted groups are in the wrong and should be acted against.
This perpetuates their oppression. Even if one does not intend to assist the
privileged, they will be doing so in consequence.
One may believe that they are simply condemning violence “on all sides.”
However, condemning the actions oppressed can create devastating social and
perceptive consequences for this groups, but condemning the power-holders is far
less likely to create those consequences -- especially considering that
power-holders can easily rewrite social narratives. To condemn violence is to
choose the side of the privileged.
When the condemnation comes from the left itself, there are a few more
dangerous consequences. First, it creates division within the fight against
injustice. This allows that injustice to survive. As violent resistors and non-violent
resistors fight against each other, the fight becomes divided and weaker.
Second, such condemnation detracts from the true villain in our resistance.
Discourse becomes clouded and ineffective. Instead of focusing on the sins of the
perpetrator, we hunt the sins of the victims.
But most importantly, we must understand the following:
The oppressed are not only burdened by our societies to fight against their
oppression, they are also policed within the methods they use. We burden them to
"fight the right way". There is great malice to both oppress someone and then
condemn them for fighting against that oppression. There is something malicious
about placing someone in a situation so deplorable that violence seems like the
only avenue to emancipation and then condemn someone for taking that avenue.
We must understand that we judge these individuals far more harshly than we
judge the oppressors themselves. It is unjust that the burning of a building, or
artworks, the construction of a shack and the disruption of a street in the fight for
free education is a greater sin than the deliberate perpetuation of a system that
disenfranchises millions of human beings. Moreover, it is inconsistent to mention
Gandhi, Luther King Jr. and Mandela when there is violent protest but to never
even think of their teachings at any other time.
If as a person, you truly value their teachings and you truly value justice in this
society then understand who the true enemy is. It is not your fellow resistor, it is
not the victim of the oppression and it is not those that burn buildings. It is the
people we resist against, it is the people that cause the oppression and it is the
people who rule in those buildings.
As mere people, who are we to place the burden on the oppressed to be Gandhi?
Who are we to police their fight for justice? Who are we to condemn the
disenfranchised? Especially when our condemnation disenfranchises them
further.
Shame on us for pardoning Verwoerd but not Bonginkosi Khanyile. Shame on us
for judging within our positions of privilege. Shame on us for trying to impose
our morality on others as if they were beneath us and deserved us moralising
them. Shame on us for thinking that we are in a position to moralise others.
Shame on us for condemning violent protest but not oppression. Shame on us for
allowing class division to continue to exist, for allowing poverty to continue to
exist, for recognising that millions of students cannot access tertiary education
but being satisfied with this. Shame on us, not the violent protesters.
Although, from within this shame, we must recognise the opportunity to step
outside of our attitude of moralisation and pursue true justice.
If we truly care about the disenfranchised then when we see them violently
protesting, we do not condemn them but we remove the chains of oppression that
cause them to revolt in the first instance. If we want to stop the violence, we must
stop the oppression.
Peace does not prevail when we condemn violence. Peace prevails when we
remove the need for violence in the first instance
There is something powerful about discourse concerning the problems that we as
civil society are tasked with solving. At times, our views - as people trying to bring
about that change - are tough to digest. At times, we ourselves are misled. At
times, we suffer losses. At times, our progress is undone. But at all times, the
power of discourse remains.
There is a great silence surrounding social issues and we are either complicit in its
continuation through our silence or through our resistance to any meaningful
discourse.
At times, we will be tempted to fight among ourselves. We must remember that
injustice survives when those fighting against it are divided. At times, the fight
will be tough. At times, the fight will seem hopeless. At times, we will be tempted
to pursue our own interests. At times, we will be victims. At times, we will find
ourselves in wrongdoing. At times, we will experience real pain and plight.
But at all times, we have the opportunity to stand united and believe in the
human spirit's ability to overcome, to prevail above all plight and realise justice
for all.
LIBERATION
We must consider a reasonable replacement for our optic democracies. In doing
so, we should recall that many chauvinists and popularists before our time have
identified similar issues with the role of power in preventing the liberation of the
common people. We must insist that merely identifying the problem is not
enough. Progressive racial views are not enough. Anti-kapitalist views are not
enough. Our leaders should be scrutinised on the basis of their vision for the
world -- their alternative. In instances where alternatives are against the interests
of the common people, those alternatives should be rejected. We must criticise
our leaders foremost for their ideas of the future and not their understanding of
the present, else we will entrust our future to people who will grant us the similar
persecution we experience in the present.
This has been a serious concern for the the liberation of the common people.
Consistently, we rally behind people who pursue power instead of restructuring
our societies to prevent the concentration of power. In fact, each revolution has
been true to their form by being circular - ending there they begin. Each new
regime simply transfers power among the political elite. At no point, are the
common people liberated.
We should be wary of people that profess to have the solution to the persecution
of the common people. Throughout history, there have been corrupt chauvinists
who have used the struggle of the common people for their political advantage.
Their strategy is to appropriate and exploit. They are trusted by the common
people to great peril. The oppressive cogs of the world continue spinning and the
common people fail to achieve liberation. It is not valuable to empower any
person with no interest in the liberation of the common people, even if their skin
matches ours and their tongue speaks our politics. Their hearts must match our
cry for liberty. Their souls must echo our pain and persecution. Their will must
be strengthened by the realities of poverty, hunger and want which continue to
plague the modern world. They must be good as it is goodness which will unhinge
the evil of the world.
Achieving this requires a culture shift. The left must emerge from historical
rhetoric, racial politics and chauvinism to advance the true liberation of people
through the eradication of societal power hierarchies. The common people should
rally behind this objective and good leaders with genuine interests to achieve their
liberation.
Moreover, we must only unify on those terms. We can still come together as a
unified front against the masters of our societies. We must decide to not just put
aside intersectional politics to serve the persecuted people of our commons. If we
do indeed choose to put the people first, we must consider all of their identity,
else they will never be liberated. We can create a collective movement that stands
fiercely against the backwardness of present societies. We can build a political left
where all the persecuted feel welcome and all the persecuted find refuge.
As people in the societies of masters, we are victimised, excluded and persecuted.
We have nothing. This is exactly why we must fight.
SECTION III: FIGHTING THE AIR
Youth exclusion and centralisation of institutions
Young people need to demand access to greater democratic power to start solving the
problems they will inherit
WHY DID YOU GO TO WAR?
Answering this question is near-impossible given that conflict is often driven by
misconception, fear-mongering, and misjudgement. Reasons that were decidedly
clear and justified before a battle become murky and questionable when the
horrific outcomes of conflict become noticeable. It is only when our decisions
directly cause devastation that we begin to question them. But, waiting for
hindsight is irresponsible and far too late. Countless lives would have already been
negatively affected, long-lasting zones for further conflict would have been
established and finding peace would become more arduous.
Let us be clear. Currently, policy-makers at governmental and institutional levels
are waging their own battles against what they perceive as social ills among youth.
This includes drugs, crime, and civil protest. Noticeably, mantras such as the ¨war
on crime¨ and the ¨war on drugs¨ have become popular slogans for these
institutions.
However, these ´wars´ mostly achieve merely the image of solving social issues, like
ragged school children fighting the air. This means they ridiculously challenge the
unchangeable consequences of democratic freedom. They do not eliminate any of
the perceived harms they identify and they create terrifying and (hopefully)
unintended consequence, especially for impoverished black youth. However,
unlike a ragged school child punching the air, our governments are led by elected
officials responsible for representing our interests and improving our lives.
Moreover, these ´wars´ do much more harm than just shifting air around - they
actively detriment people, especially youth.
The cause of these disastrous policies is the deliberate exclusion of youth in their
creation. In fact, most institutions - governance, mass media, education, religion,
family, legal systems, economic systems, penal systems and the state - exclude
youth. Therefore, I compile and present an extensive argument in this section
questioning contemporary policy decisions and the general exclusion of youth
from decision-making.
The first part of this section is dedicated to unravelling the system of exclusion,
policy-making and the current power structures which exist. We must understand
the history behind our institutions and the policies they create. A contemporary
author, Harriet Washington comments that ¨trying to understand a historical
problem without knowing its history is like trying to treat a patient without
eliciting a thorough medical history. You are doomed to fail.¨ So, we begin this
section of the discourse in the formation periods of present policy.
Second, we must identify the interests of and recognise the roleplayers that
initiate, lobby and control institutions and lobby policies. This can clarify the
truthful goals of these policies and create a target for their accountability.
Furthermore, we can clarify why these policies are failing. Most importantly, we
can disestablish the well-believed notion that the elder simply knows best and will
act in the best interest of all.
Third and finally, I hope to motivate the decentralisation of these institutions.
This achieves the interpretation of issues, from the perspective of the common
people, a compelling case for why youth should be included in decision-making
within institutions. This allows us to determine a path forward, lobby for
progressive policy and begin to change significant youth issues, particularly in
South Africa.
I have learned few secrets about the ways South Africa has been shaped since the
dawn of its democracy, but each new revelation shocks any naive belief that our
current leadership has any great intent to decisively end the impoverishment and
oppression of the millions of dependent youth within our borders. Hopefully,
this discourse will convince any eager young agent of progress that our country
requires a subtle purging of ´old guard´ thinking and policies should be urgently
reformed, informed by the integrity and activism of our youth.
This section of the discourse is brief, primarily because its goal is to initiate an
ongoing conversation, wherein stronger policy positions can be determined.
Moreover, intelligible research can follow. The necessary actions to bring forth
change are the important consequences of any discourse. As such, I will present
my argument with brevity.
I must admit that young South Africans are often filled with explosive activism
and distrust for government. Often, this is interpreted as a reservation against
engaging in solution-building. In truth, young South Africans are most eager to
spread ideas on nation-building and in particular, solving the issues that youth
currently suffer under or will inherit. The limitation to this behaviour is a
consequence of the leaders of institutions who exclude youth from
decision-making. Naturally, we are meant to lobby such ideas to and through
elected (or appointed) officials, but they have displayed disinterest in the ideas,
struggles and empowerment of young people.
So, if South Africa is to develop the means to liberate its people, an attitude of
youth activism must be adopted by any who concede that our leaders are being
deliberately inadequate. Moreover, there remains a great opportunity for young
South Africans to continually sit down and develop solutions to youth issues,
which can (and does) accompany our activism.
This discourse is necessary. If we are to ever identify an enemy and commit to
fighting it, we must be certain that the future shall not judge us heavily for it.
More importantly, we must never be caught fighting the air.
EXCLUSION, HISTORY & SYSTEMS
Understanding institutions, the policies they create & the influence of interest
groups
Spending any significant amount of time in young conscious circles will expose
any listener to extensive criticism of ¨the system¨ relevant to the contextual social
issue. Recognising the arching cogs that turn the world is necessary for changing
their direction. There is a clear system which acts to inform policy on
youth-related issues - we must turn its cogs.
As a starting point, we must identify the objectives and limitations of policy and a
series of related questions. What informs policy? Who informs policy? How are
policies prioritised and compared? Most importantly, what's the problem?
Policies are created by institutions (including government) to address the needs or
interests of the group of people the institution is mandated to serve. For a
government, this group is its citizens, trade partners, allied governments etc. For a
university, this group is its students, staff, workers etc. For any institution, it is
clear which groups deserve its service because explicit or implicit relationships are
formed between the institution and group. Importantly, institutions will always
have multiple interest groups to serve.
The needs or interests (referred to as only interests hereinafter) of these groups
can be laid out in legal documents such as a constitution, a contract or the rules of
an institution. The interests can also be conferred to an authority through a
mandate, either self-imposed, delivered by constituents of the institution or by
any group with legitimate interest. It is necessary that these interests are legally
officiated because, in the event where there are not satisfied, interest groups can
utilise legal means to ensure both their satisfaction and accountability.
Interests can either be broad ends or very specifically demanded actions. Often,
specific actions are intended to achieve broad ends. So, groups will be satisfied
with alternative actions that serve a similar purpose to the specific action they
demand. But, specific actions can also be ends in themselves. These cannot be
satisfied by alternative actions. An example of a broad end could be the
achievement of a safe working environment or the creation of jobs, which can be
achieved in numerous different ways.
Conversely, a specific action such as harshly punishing perpetrators of sexual
crimes has only one means. If this punishment intends to merely reduce incidents
of sexual crimes, an institution may seek alternative actions that seek the same
effect. However, if the interest group, for any reason, wishes for perpetrators to
be adequately punished then there is no alternative action for that interest. Often,
institutions draw no distinction between specific actions and broad ends, because
they misunderstand (or show little interest in) the motivations for those specific
actions.
Concluding from this, but also quite obviously, many interests are simply not
satisfied by institutions. Further reasons for these limitations and shortfalls will
be discussed shortly. Also, it is for this reason that this discourse exists.
A special kind of interest seeks to alter the relationship between an institution and
a group. The nature of the relationship is initially determined through legal
documentation or implicit social agreement. However, specific interactions
between the institution and the group may later be deemed against the interest of
the group. This is obviously a problem because the institution is primarily
responsible for behaving in the interest of that group. Therefore, the group may
deliver a new interest that fundamentally alters the relationship between the
group and the institution.
For example, the interest of learners of colour in high schools in South Africa for
looser hair regulations was in effect an interest to reform the relationship between
students of colour and schools in general. This interest may seem to not have been
evident when the learners initially entered the school but during their tenure, it
developed into an interest. These kinds of interests face great resistance because of
their intention to change a group´s relation to institutions and because they are
perceived to not be initial interests.
However, these interests are just as legitimate and are more likely to be reflective
of the true interests of a group. Moreover, groups should be able to alter their
interests in any case. Institutions that are prone to practice conservatism in
relation to their interest groups fail to recognise their mandate. But, this still is
not really the problem.
As earlier alluded, groups have varying levels of influence over policy. Sometimes,
more influence arises because the group is more affected by a policy but the
strongest determinant of influence arises from the incentives of the institution
and how capable groups are at achieving them. Groups that are more closely
aligned with the institution's interests will receive greater influence.
For instance, a university can be said to have the incentive to generate prestige.
From this, it may develop the motive to prioritise the interests of its academic
achievers. One can then realise why a university's management chooses to ensure
the continuation of examinations during periods of protest. In many instances,
group prioritisation is a clear issue. Using the previous example, academic
achievers are more likely to be brought up in privileged communities and belong
to a privileged class and race.
So, group prioritisation in this instance acts against the interests of poor black
youth, who are more likely to be disruptive of examinations. In fact, in most
instances, it will act against the impoverished and oppressed groups because these
groups possess the least capacity to meet the incentives of capitalised institutions.
This is not because of the inherent inability of these groups to develop such
capacity, but because they are systematically kept down. Therefore, their
oppression creates the means for more oppression.
Group prioritisation, in itself, is not necessarily a harmful activity. Sometimes,
especially when interests conflict, an institution will need to prioritise. A
government budget, for instance often has to make tough trade-offs. However,
the interests that inform an institution´s priorities can be harmful. A government
that prioritises wealthy minorities over impoverished majorities is a common
instance of skewed prioritisation. Skewed interests beget this skewed
prioritisation and therefore the harm.
Such prioritisation can also become circular. A favoured group may become
powerful and use that power to further cement their privilege. Both this
privileged group and an institution will gain from this arrangement. Sometimes,
this is clear corruption, but often it can occur within legal bounds. It is then easy
to understand how this functions as a system.
Another instance of prioritisation might stem from established norms or values.
For instance, the world recognises prestige through academic excellence, so
universities interpret prestige similarly. If prestige were hypothetically recognised
as the accessibility and inclusion of education then oppressed groups would have
more capacity to satisfy the incentive. In this case, the incentive to be prestigious
is no longer socially harmful. Understanding that the mere possession of an
incentive is often not in itself harmful is important because it means that
attention will be paid to fighting how institutions develop values instead of
fighting the incentives themselves.
For instance, it would be difficult to conceive a university management that
possesses little interest in prominence. However, if the people that compose that
management interpreted prominence in a way that is beneficial to oppressed
groups then oppressed groups would benefit. Clearly, then, it is easy to
understand that how incentives materialise simply depends on who leads
institutions and what values they support. Therefore, in referring to institutions
from henceforth, interpret the term as the decision-makers of those institutions
and not the institutions themselves.
This makes further sense when investigating the individuals who hold power in
institutions. In South Africa, it is a common reality that the board of governors of
prominent institutions are composed of privileged individuals, who benefit from
any combination of racial, economic, gendered (and sometimes, religious)
privilege.
As established, policies are fundamentally prioritised based on the institution's
interests and the influence of the groups it is mandated to. Groups with greater
influence over policy formulation also have greater influence over that
prioritisation.
So, the existence of an interest may not affect the actions of an institution. But
when a group with great influence develops an interest, it materialises in action.
Often, institutions will claim a lack of capacity to implement a specific group´s
interest. Sometimes, this may be true but on the large, it is likely a
misrepresentation. The institution's capacity may be inhibited because it is being
apportioned to the interest of a different group. So, the institution does possess
the capacity in general but opts to direct its resources to serve a different interest.
This is especially true for the social issues discussed in this discourse. The
approach to crime, drugs and civil protests is less an issue of capacity and more an
issue of skewed prioritisation of interest groups and blatant disregard for youth.
Unlike funding social programmes, providing housing, fee-free education or other
costly initiatives, choosing to end the mass incarceration of black youth does not
require financial capacity. It requires a shift in priority.
As earlier established, the interest which is prioritised will arise from the group
that is most closely aligned to the incentives of the decision-makers of
institutions. In South Africa, it is then understandable why poor black youth
often receive the short stick. The leaders from institutions are either members of a
white elite or a black elite, with incentives that cannot be achieved by poor black
South Africans.
In essence, the problem is with who leads the various institutions and which
group is aligned to their incentives. There do exist leaders who will act in
accordance with the interests of the impoverished and oppressed. However, these
leaders are seldom elected or appointed. Herein lies the problem.
One might strongly believe the problem is that South African leaders are simply
(legally) corrupt and certainly, we cannot have a discussion about South African
institutions without mentioning corruption. In the contemporary sense, the
effects of corruption are similar to the effects of interest prioritisation. The major
difference is corruption is a legal offence and accountability is legally defined and
pursuable. For the purposes of this discourse, corruption is a form of group
prioritisation and should be solved in the same manner, apart from the obvious
legal accountability. But more importantly, if the actions have the same
consequence, surely they should be regarded with similar severity. For instance,
corporate South Africa may often use their power to influence government policy
in ways that are within prescript. This sort of influence is equivalent to the
capturing of a state, but is non-prosecutable. It seems ridiculous and arbitrary to
then excuse these occurrences because they just happen to be legal. We cannot
deny the influence of corruption over South African institutions but we must
solve it as part of a larger struggle.
In this light, there is one other property of South African institutions that must
be addressed. Often, there are malicious biases which inform the actions of the
leaders of institutions. For instance, the apartheid government was an institution
which advanced racial segregation because of its racist oppressive beliefs. In this
case, certain interest groups who should ordinarily be included are deliberately
excluded. This is not a case of group prioritisation wherein interests are
compared. This is systemic exclusion.
Here, one should aptly claim that when the interests of a group are excluded, it is
equivalent to them not having existed at all. This is a clear limitation of political
expression. Currently, young people may find that they are excluded from
consideration in many institutions. In fact, I put forward that young people face a
gross limitation of their political expression due to their deliberate exclusion from
many South African institution´s decision-making processes. I would dub any
malicious institution that fails to recognise a legitimate interest as ¨shallow¨.
Shallow institutions feel the need to reject many interests. Sometimes, they fail to
make sense of conflicting interests that they are tasked to choose between so they
exclude particular interests to develop an easy means to prioritise interests. Here,
it follows that the excluded interests are not rejected interests because they were
never considered to be interests in the first place. In the absence of conflicting
interest, a shallow institution seeks to establish a power relation between itself
and the groups it excludes. They deliberately do not consider many interests from
groups to display their power over these groups. If they do not, the institution
may fear that the group will find itself to be deserving of greater prioritisation and
able to easily influence the institution. So, in response, it hardens itself against the
group. In fact, the people who rule institutions understand that they solely
possess positional power. This is empty, situational control which stems not from
people but from position. This sort of power is difficult to maintain and the
exclusion of interests is a means to attempt control.
In response to exclusion, the leaders of malicious and shallow institutions must
clearly be expunged. Current social activism seeks to achieve this. However, the
institutions that practice socially harmful group prioritisation are often
overlooked even though the consequence of their actions are similar. Corrupt,
malicious and shallow institutions are being met with clear youth resistance.
Extending this to institutions which practice skewed prioritisation will enable a
holistic overhaul of the present system which perpetuates impoverishment and
oppression.
A particular interest group with consistent prominence are the financial backers
of institutions. For instance, various think-tanks and NGOs output questionable
research positions. This sort of behaviour can easily be explained by considering
the funders of these groups. Moreover, groups or individuals that possess the
incentive and ability to sustainably contribute large sums of capital to institutions
are more likely to be members of a privileged class. So, yet again, the interests of
those institutions will be skewed against poor black people.
One may believe in limiting the influence of these funders or other creative means
to regulate their influence, however, I maintain that the solution to this specific
issue is identical to the solution to group prioritisation. This is because funders
are themselves an interest group and favouring the funders of an institutions is a
form of group prioritisation. So, although this discourse may not concentrate on
this interest group, the holistic solution does include them.
This brief explanation of institutions is in no form a comprehensive
understanding of the complex cogs involved in policy-making. Rather, it serves as
a guide for understanding the behaviour of institutions, which in turn directs
their attitude toward policy and activity. Moreover, this explanation serves as a
preface for the arguments presented in this text.
Finally, we must address policy implementation. As earlier stated, policies are
created by institutions (including government) to address the needs or interests of
the group of people the institution is mandated to serve. Also, we now
understand that these policies are often skewed toward the interests of privileged
groups. It follows that the implementation of this policy will also be skewed.
There is a great misconception that often an institution possesses adequate policy,
but fails in implementing this policy. This is not to say that there are no problems
in the implementation of policy. Rather, we often interpret policy failures as
implementation failures. For instance, an institution may outlaw sexual crimes
but fail to investigate incidents, believe survivors of sexual misconduct or pursue
perpetrators. This is an obvious gap in implementation of policy. But the source
of this problem may lie in poor policy in other areas. For instance, investigative
officers may face little accountability for not pursuing sexual crimes or their
training may not include sensitisation workshops. If both of these existed, the
implementation of a policy that outlaws sexual crimes may be more effective. A
failure of implementation of a specific policy is an inadequacy of other policy.
Another issue is that policies may have good intentions, but can often be written
in ways that are harmful. Consider a disciplinary code at an institution that allows
mitigating defenses, but the mitigating defenses that are allowed are biased
toward privileged groups. When a member of that privileged group faces
discipline, they may encounter a light punishment due to qualifying for those
mitigating defenses. However, a member of an underprivileged group may
encounter tough punishment because they fail to qualify. This disparity is
informed by how that policy is developed and written and not because of failures
in the policy's implementation.
Implementation is an obvious issue. However, the only means we have to fight
poor implementation is policy itself. Policies that regulate and create
accountability are the best ways to ensure adequate implementation. So, failure of
implementation is a failure of policy.
In short, we should understand that policy is crucial for reforming the societies
we live in and creating progress. Policy is often overlooked. This is a critical flaw
in young discourse. In fact, attempting to change institutions whilst ignoring
their policies is itself fighting the air.
So, understand policy. Understand that it is not concerned with interests, but
rather the interests of prioritised groups. Policies are not responses to objective
evaluations of issues or interests but rather an evaluation of interest groups. Most
importantly, we can and will improve institutions in South Africa by improving
their policies.
HISTORY OF YOUTH POLICY
Understanding why youth are excluded from institutions & policy
Currently, young people in South Africa are rightfully frustrated by their
exclusion from decision-making within institutions. Too often, the policy
positions and behaviour of these institutions act against the interest of youth,
because they are unable to influence these directives. But, regardless of
consequence, young people yearn for political expression and the achievement of
the democratic tenets of participation, representation and accountability. None
of these can be easily achieved when youth are locked out of institutions.
Clearly, participation is limited when youth are not adequately considered or
consulted. Accountability is inhibited because youth may not overse processes,
raise complaint against decisions or influence future decisions. Similarly,
representation is void because the individuals that represent the interest of youth
are likely youth themselves and are equally closed off from participation and
accountability measures.
Importantly, officials of institutions deliberately close off youth. They recognise
that the consequence of enfranchising youth threatens their political continuity.
This is because youth succumb to populism, which almost always directly acts
against the established values of our current societies.
In fact, writing for Vox, Pippa Norris of Harvard University presents a thorough
explanation of populism and its three primary dimensions:
Populism for me has three dimensions. One of which is an appeal to
popular sovereignty over and above liberal democracy. The argument is
that moral virtue and power should be with the ordinary people and not
the elites.
The second dimension is anti-establishment, and this is opposed not just to
political and economic elites but also to other perceived power-holders, like
intellectuals or journalists or other groups at the top of society.
And then thirdly, even though it's about popular sovereignty in practice,
there aren't that many mechanisms. Mechanisms like public opinion polls
or other forms of democratic referendum are typically weak. So in
practice, what happens is the power is seen to reside in the individual
leader, the charismatic leader who represents the voice of the ordinary
people.
So those three elements come together but they don't tell you a lot about
what populists stand for. And here what you get is a variety of populists —
from authoritarian populists to progressive populists, and they differ in
their actual values.30
This presents a clear threat. First, populists clearly define established
power-holders as their primary adversaries. Again, this is obviously a direct target
to the decision-makers within various institutions. Note that populism is not a
specific set of ideological beliefs and there can different groups of populist with
different beliefs. This means every established institutions can clearly identify a
specific group of youth who threaten their political power. The result is that all
institutions create general exclusions for youth. But, they may create anciliarry
access for ¨trusted youth.¨ This will explored shortly, but recognise that inclusion
for a trusted youth is far from inclusion for a popular youth.
Second, populist movements develop around charismatic leaders. This creates a
powerful adversary for institutions. An individual, with mass support could claim
to be representative of people (well, they are) and easily depose the institution´s
established decision-makers from power if the populist leaders are given the
opportunity to contest. To avoid this, institutions close off these leaders from the
ability to contest in the first instance. Realistically, some trusted youth are
included in aspects of decision-making but institutions ensure that these are not
the populist youth leaders. However, by excluding the truthful youth
representatives, institutions effectively exclude youth.
Third and finally, populists prefer the decentralisation of power and greater
elements of direct democracy. Norris refers to this as ´popular sovereignty.´ This
would result in the inclusion of the (mostly, young) populace in some matters of
the decision-making within institutions. This obviously results in significantly
30
Pippa Norris. Populism, defined in 170 words. 2017.
less power for the previous central group of decision-makers. Moreover, it puts
into motion a permanent means to keep these decision-makers away from power.
In response, institutions exclude this shaking of power by excluding the youth
populist leaders who might bring it about.
This attitude that power-holders have toward populist youth was exposed
thoroughly following suspicions that Jacob Zuma was favouring a free education
plan by then twenty-eight-year-old Mukovhe Morris Masutha. Masutha is
certainly a populist, having previously served as the Student Representative
Council President at the University of Witwatersrand and supported the Fees
Must Fall movement. So, when he presented a free education plan, it was in line
with the aforementioned populist goals.
The ensuing response from corporations, journalists and politicians was revealing.
They lambasted Masutha´s supposed incompetence, inexperience and most
importantly, influence. For these power-holders, it seemed outrageous that a
person so young could influence critical policy.
Ferial Haffajee, notably one of South Africa's most prominent media
power-holders, referred to Masutha as a member of a ¨cult of amateurs¨. Haffajee,
as an established journalist an editor, is certainly a social power-holder. Her
influence on South African political discourse has been enormous since she first
became an editor in 2004, then under the Mail and Guardian. After this, she was
editor of the City Press and editor of the South African Huffington Post. Note,
that Norris´ describes journalists an example of power-holders. Clearly, within the
institution of the media, Haffajee is a key decision-maker. As such, it came as no
surprise to witness her blatant ageism as displayed in her blog post titled, Zuma,
Free Fees And The Cult Of Amateurs:
Mzobe and Masutha are symbols of the president's predilection for
kitchen cabinets where policy is decided outside of formal government
structures. But even in his choice of national executive, President Zuma
has appointed non-specialists and junior politicians into key roles making
for a cult of the amateur leading to South Africa's growing
underdevelopment.31
31
Ferial Haffajee. Zuma, Free Fees And The Cult Of Amateurs. 2017.
Notice how she condescends youth by referring to them as non-specialists, junior
politicians and amateur. For her, youth deserve to remain outside of formal
government structures and can only contribute to kitchen cabinets. Here, she
does not justify why she believes people like Masutha are necessarily under
qualified but simply states that he is, as a result of his age.
In reality, Masutha possess a string of qualifications. IOL reported that he holds a
Bachelor of Arts degree in Economic Geography, a Bachelor of Science (Honours)
degree in Environmental Management and Development Planning, a Masters of
Science degree in Local Economic Development and he is a PhD candidate
(Educational Leadership) at Georgia State University in Atlanta. Apart from this,
he founded the Thusanani Foundation to assist youth from marginalized
communities across South Africa to access and succeed in post-schooling
opportunities. As a result, he was a member of the 2015 Mail & Guardian 200
Young South Africans.
Masutha is far from amateur and to suggest so would mean to discredit legitimate
qualifications such as several postgraduate qualifications from the University of
Johannesburg and the University of Witwatersrand, a functioning education
organisation and recognition by the MG YSA. That would mean all the above
institutions confer amateur qualifications. That would be ridiculous to assert.
The truth is that Masutha´s qualification was called into suspicion because he was
young. Moreover, the purge on his competency arose from established politicians
and corporate leaders, whose motives can be suspected. As Masutha argues in an
interview on Power FM, there was little questioning how government would
fund the Income Contingent Loan system from institutional power-holders, yet
there was mass inquisition about his proposed plan.
In the case of Masutha´s free education plan, we should be critical of how it can be
financed and we should certainly be cautious of his relationship to Jacob Zuma,
but to question his competency and ability to develop a free education plan in of
itself is ageist and furthers the institutional exclusion of youth.
Extending from the fact that youth are populists, we must also consider that
youth possess little capacity for quid-pro-quo. They have no means to pay for
their inclusion. Older people possess corporations, organisations and varying
levels of social and economic capital. As a result, political capital (the ability to
influence decision-makers in institutions) is granted to them. In this sense, their
existing power is used to attract more power.
Conversely, youth present nothing but their ideals and their numbers. They
possess no financial or influence to offer. Their ideals are counter to the
establishment. Not only is this valueless, it is also threatening. Their numbers, on
the other hand, are important. But these can be accessed without granting access
to decision-making. Unlike economic capital which is mostly only dispensed in
return for political gain, millions of youth are satisfied with granting their human
capital with no return. Perhaps this is more aptly described as institutions
convincing masses of youth to be satisfied with no return.
So, institutions have no qualm excluding youth. Note that when thousands of
South African youth protested for the decolonisation of education and the
provision of fee-free education, their disruptive behaviour seemed to pressure the
national government to suspend a fee increment. However, I would argue that
government acted because of the present threat to infrastructure and economic
capital. This would harm an included group of decision-makers. So, government
responded to the interests of those elites. This was in no way government curbing
to the influence of youth and their numbers. In fact, if there was no danger to
economic capital, I doubt government would have acted at all.
So, apart from having little to offer, youth also realistically possess little to
pressure institutions and their decision-makers, apart from destructive behaviour.
Recently, there is a belief that youth are generating more control through
increased civil unrest. Already, there should be a concern that civil unrest has
become a necessary mechanism for youth. But more importantly, without being
destructive, civil unrest has been unsuccessful in influencing the decisions of
institutions. The civil unrest has also mostly been directed toward institutions of
learning and the government instead of a broad protest for youth inclusion
throughout institutions.
Most importantly, the use of civil unrest does not fundamentally change the
institutions, but achieves short-term victories. Institutions need to include youth
sustainably and not situationally. So, for the long-term inclusion of youth, civil
unrest should not be viewed as the adequate solution.
Currently, youth do not possess the means to generate the economic capital
required to obtain political capital. Youth unemployment in South Africa
currently lies above 50%. Even worse, the trend of mass youth unemployment is
not improving.
Fig 2.1
So, young people are both closed off from institutions and have no means to
organically incentivise inclusions. This results in perpetual exclusion and a
frustrated youth. Under these conditions, youth develop negative sentiments to
institutions and a greater motivation to act radically against these institutions.
If young people are excluded from a building, they will have no qualm burning it.
The decision-makers in institutions deliberately create the conditions for youth
exclusion knowing well that youth radicalism is a consequence. This is because
decision-makers in institutions require populist youth groups to lose moral
compass and public sympathy. The result is that the trusted youth are portrayed
as reasonable and deserving of inclusion. A clear contrast between the moderation
of the trusted youth and the radicalism of the populist youth sways public
support toward the trusted youth. Moreover, it presents the public from
questioning the exclusion of the latter and the inclusion of the former. Therefore,
institutions create a stable perception of ¨correct¨ youth engagement despite not
engaging with youth in reality.
These perceptions are continually reinforced because populist youth are
continually excluded. So, a rigid system of youth regulation is formed. The
decision-makers in institutions have successfully crafted a means to ensure they
hold onto centralised power.
As a consequence, populist-minded youth may develop political expressions that
are ignorant, apathetic, frustrated or any combination of the three.
The ignorant youth abound. These young people do not engage in political
affairs, abstain from analysing and developing opinions of current events and are
unaware of the painful realities of mass oppression, persecution and
impoverishment. Realistically, they develop this way as a consequence of their
exclusion.
The apathetic youth is not necessarily ignorant. These young people have lost
faith in institutions and their ability to progress societies. As explored, these
institutions shut youth out of decision-making and then make decisions against
the interest of youth. For many, this develops into an apathy for political
expression which can justifiably be viewed as futile. Similarly, apathetic youth
mat view youth organisations as controlled entities lacking genuine political
expression. So, the clear path for these youth is to disengage from the political
processes which have already excluded them.
The frustrated youth perceives institutions similarly to the apathetic youth but
opts to maintain their political expression in light of the social problems that still
require solving. Moreover, these youth are motivated by a duty to bring about
those solutions, even if it means fighting against the decision-makers within
institutions.
But, all of these type of youth assist the institutions. As earlier expressed, the
frustrated youth´s role is to become unreasonable so that the trusted youth is seen
as reasonable. The apathetic and ignorant youth allow the institutions to first,
justify their exclusion of youth and second, direct the blame for youth
non-participation on youth. The conversation shifts toward ways to increase
youth participation and decrease youth apathy instead of changing the structure
of institutions to include youth in decision-making processes.
Cleverly, institutions exploit the consequences of the exclusion of youth after
being the architects of the exclusion of youth. They even convince young people
that the problem lies with themselves! As general society, we accept youth apathy
and ignorance as an organic creation and spend little time asking ourselves the
history of youth participation and how it has reduced so significantly.
Upon investigating the voter participation statistics for South African elections
from 1994
In a paper, titled ¨South African Youth: Politically Apathetic?¨, Elnari Potgieter
and Barend F. Lutz investigated the extent of political apathy among youth. In
their report, they compiled a table investigating the number of youth, aged 18 -
29, who had registered to vote for the respective national elections:
Sourced from the 2014 South African Reconciliation Barometer Survey
There is sufficient interest among youth for political expression and inclusion,
but as institutions continue to practice exclusion, the interest will dissipate.
A final aspect of youth exclusion that must be discussed are youth organisations.
These can function either as ancillary groups to institutions or as entirely
independent and parallel structures. These youth organisations may create the
perception that young people have an element of institutional inclusion, but
because institutions still have the incentive to exclude populist youth, these
institutions tend to lack decision-making power. If they do have decision-making
power then the institutions will ensure that they are controlled by trusted youth.
TRUSTED YOUTH