Ukraine and the pro-imperialist intellectuals

Alex Lantier, wsws.org

The very presence of Slavoj Žižek should alert us to the dubious pedigree of any "progressive" organization.

The very presence of subtle imperial collaborationist Slavoj Žižek should alert us to the dubious pedigree of any “progressive” initiative.

The “Open letter on the future of Ukraine” issued by a group of Western academics and foreign policy operatives is a vile defense of the ongoing far-right protests in Ukraine supported by Washington and the European Union (EU). It peddles the old lie, repeated over nearly a quarter century of imperialist wars and interventions in Eastern Europe since the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, that US and EU policy is driven only by a disinterested love of democracy and human rights.

It states, “The future of Ukrainians depends most of all on Ukrainians themselves. They defended democracy and their future 10 years ago, during the Orange Revolution, and they are standing up for those values today. As Europeans grow disenchanted with the idea of a common Europe, people in Ukraine are fighting for that idea and for their country’s place in Europe. Defending Ukraine from the authoritarian temptations of its corrupt leaders is in the interests of the democratic world.”

The identity of the imperialist powers’ local proxies demolishes the open letter’s pretense that the imperialist powers are fighting for democracy. They are relying on a core of a few thousand fascistic thugs from the Right Sector organization and the Svoboda Party to topple the Ukrainian regime in a series of street protests, replace it with a pro-EU government hostile to Moscow, and impose savage austerity measures. Washington and the EU are not fighting for democracy, but organizing a social counterrevolution.

In November, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych backed away from plans to integrate Ukraine into the EU and push through tens of billions of dollars in social cuts against workers to pay back Ukraine’s debts to the major banks. Fearing an explosion of mass protests, he accepted a bailout from Russia instead. The far-right opposition redoubled its efforts, as dueling anti-government and anti-opposition protests spread in Ukrainian- and Russian-speaking parts of the country, respectively.

Ana Palacio, another signatory. Again, the very presence of this socialite careerist and imperialist technocrat should give anyone pause as to what she's endorsing.

Ana Palacio, another signatory. Again, the very presence of this socialite careerist, cabinet member in a reactionary Spanish administration, and imperialist technocrat should give anyone pause as to worthiness of what she’s endorsing.

While EU intervention threatens Ukraine with social collapse and civil war, the open letter stands reality on its head, presenting the developments in Ukraine as a threat to the EU: “It is not too late for us to change things for the better and prevent Ukraine from being a dictatorship. Passivity in the face of the authoritarian turn in Ukraine and the country’s reintegration into a newly expanding Russian imperial sphere of interests pose a threat to the European Union’s integrity.”

In fact, neither Ukraine nor Russia has threatened to attack the EU. It is Ukraine—with its energy pipeline network, strategic military bases, and heavy industry—that is emerging as a major prize in an aggressive thrust by US and European imperialism to plunder the region and target Russia. While US and European imperialism threaten to attack Moscow’s main Middle East allies, Syria and Iran, they are threatening Russia’s main Eastern European ally, Ukraine, with regime-change or partition.

The drive to impose untrammeled imperialist domination of Eastern Europe, which began after the restoration of capitalism with escalating NATO interventions and wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, is at a very advanced stage. It is setting into motion the next campaign, for regime-change and ethnic partition in Russia, where Washington is studying a variety of ethnic groups—from Chechens, to Tatars and Circassians—whose grievances can be mobilized against Moscow.

This is raised quite directly in leading sections of the Western press. The Financial Times of London wrote Sunday, “Mr. Yanukovych and Mr. Putin are leaders of a similar type and with a similar governing model. If Ukrainians push the man in Kiev out of power, Russians might wonder why they should not do the same to the man in the Kremlin.”

By aligning themselves with the US-EU drive to dominate Eastern Europe, the signatories of the open letter are embracing what historically have been the aims of German imperialism. Berlin twice invaded Ukraine in the 20th century, in 1918 and 1941. Significantly, imperialism’s proxies in Ukraine today are the political descendants of Ukrainian fascists who helped carry out the Ukrainian Holocaust as allies of the Nazis—whose policy was to depopulate Ukraine and prepare its colonization by German settlers through mass extermination.

Now, at this year’s Munich Security Conference, top German officials stated that Berlin plans to abandon restrictions on the use of military force that Germany has obeyed since the end of World War II.

The disastrous consequences of the Soviet bureaucracy’s self-destructive policies and the light-minded approach of Mikhail Gorbachev as he moved to dissolve the USSR—believing that the concept of imperialism was a fiction invented by Marxism—are emerging fully into view.

A EuroMaidan protester during clashes with police that lasted between Jan. 19 and 22.

A EuroMaidan protester during clashes with police that lasted between Jan. 19 and 22. As seen on www.kyivpost.co, a pro-Western site. Note the quality of the body armor and preparations. 

Trotsky warned that the dissolution of the USSR would not only restore capitalism, but also transform Russia into a semi-colonial fiefdom of the imperialist powers: “A capitalist Russia could not now occupy even the third-rate position to which czarist Russia was predestined by the course of the world war. Russian capitalism today would be a dependent, semi-colonial capitalism without any prospects. Russia Number 2 would occupy a position somewhere between Russia Number 1 and India. The Soviet system with its nationalized industry and monopoly of foreign trade, in spite of all its contradictions and difficulties, is a protective system for the economic and cultural independence of the country.”

This is the agenda being laid out by imperialism and its fascist proxies: to return Russia and Ukraine to semi-colonial status through internal subversion, civil war, or external military intervention. Processes are being set into motion that threaten the deaths of millions.

Mobilizing the working class in struggle against imperialist war and neocolonial exploitation is the central task in Eastern Europe. Due warnings must be made. In the absence of such a struggle, given the bankruptcy and unpopularity of the region’s oligarchic regimes, there is every reason to think that determined fascist gangs—supported by imperialist governments and given political cover by pro-imperialist academics and diplomatic operatives [and the always obliging Western media—Eds]—will succeed in toppling existing regimes.

This underscores the reactionary role of the signatories of the open letter. Some are top diplomats or “non-governmental” imperialist operatives—such as former foreign ministers Ana Palacio of Spain and Bernard Kouchner of France, and Chris Stone and Aryeh Neier of the US State Department-linked Open Society Institute of billionaire George Soros. Most, however, are academics and intellectuals who are lending their names to give credibility to far-right reaction in Ukraine, through a foul combination of learned ignorance and historic blindness.

Some of the names on the list of signatories evoke regret—such as Fritz Stern, a historian who was once capable of writing seriously on historical questions.

Others, like that of postmodernist charlatan Slavoj Zizek, come as no surprise. They only confirm the alignment of affluent sections of the middle class with imperialist brigandage, and the reactionary role of pseudo-left thought in training mouthpieces for imperialism.

After decades of intellectual war on Marxism in universities and the media, cultural life is in a disastrous state. Hostile to the Marxist conceptions of imperialism and the role of material interests in driving its policies, these layers are left unmoved by imperialist crimes—the destruction of Fallujah during the US occupation of Iraq, the drone murder campaign in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Their pens spring into action, however, when EU politicians excite their moral glands by denouncing regimes targeted for imperialist intervention. They can be led by the nose, even behind fascists, with a few empty invocations of human rights.

Alex Lantier is a senior political analyst with wsws.org, an education resource of the Social Equality Party.



BOOKS: Forging a Socialist-Islamist Alliance

By William T. Hathaway

Review of Eric Walberg, From Postmodernism to Postsecularism: Re-emerging Islamic Civilization, Clarity Press, 2013

From Postmodernism to Postsecularism- Re-emerging Islamic CivilizationMost western Middle East experts see Islam as a problem for the West — a source of terrorism, religious fanaticism, unwanted immigrants — and they see their job as helping to change the Middle East so it’s no longer a problem for us. Eric Walberg, however, recognizes that this is another instance of the Big Lie.

The actual problem is the multifaceted aggression the West has been inflicting on the Middle East for decades and is determined to continue, no matter what the cost to them and us will be. His books and articles present the empirical evidence for this with scholarly precision and compassionate concern for the human damage done by our imperialism.

 

His latest book, From Postmodernism to Postsecularism: Re-emerging Islamic Civilization, is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand our ongoing war on the Muslim world — from Libya to the Philippines, from growing beleaguered communities scattered across North America and Europe to South Africa and Australia — from the perspective of those on the receiving end of America’s violence today. It is a compelling representation of both the breathtaking sweep of fourteen centuries of Islamic civilization and the current state of the Muslim world.

In this sequel to his impressive Postmodern Imperialism (2011), Walberg attempts to bridge the East-West gap, “not through a reconciliatory discourse, but through a critical reading of history,” according to the Palestinian-American writer Ramzy Baroud. Walberg looks at Islam as both religion and ideology, tracing it both via a methodological and an epistemological critique, and takes it seriously as a civilizational alternative to our present bankrupt secular imperialist order.

Our politicians and media have created an image of fiendish Muslim terrorists who “hate us for our freedom.” But they really hate us for subjugating them, for overthrowing their governments, dominating their economies, and undermining their way of life. Since we started the aggression, the attacks won’t end until we leave their countries.

Walberg asks the logical question: What can replace the neocolonial order so ruthlessly and cleverly put in place by the imperial powers in the Middle East over the past century? He explores many alternative answers ranging from “more of the same” to radical transformation.

What does Islam have to say about economics, politics, community, relations with Nature? Walberg charts a wealth of experience from the past fourteen centuries. Islam was the first world order to unite people on the basis of genuine equality, in a truly multicultural way. It never created empires like the Romans, the Christian heirs to the Romans, and most recently the British and Americans. Why?

Who are the great Muslim thinkers, and how do they differ from western thinkers of the time? How do the Prophet Muhammad’s efforts to enact the revelations of the Quran in the seventh century compare with the teachings of Marx about how to create a world order without the depredations of capitalism?

These are some of the questions Walberg addresses, trying to bring together the two main opponents of imperialism today: Islamists and socialists. Our foe is the entire Western corporate juggernaut, of which Israel is only a part. To survive, we must set aside our religious and political differences and form a united front. Shias, Sunnis, secularists, and socialists need to work together to defeat our common enemy. As Samir Amin wrote, “To bring the militarist project of the United States to defeat has become the primary task, the major responsibility, for everyone.” If we join in solidarity, we can win. Otherwise the imperialists will continue to divide and rule.

But it is essential for socialists to take Islamists seriously, and vice versa, for both sides to understand the various currents in the common resistance to imperialism, and to forge alliances that will be lasting. So far, Islam has been at best tolerated by socialists, at worst, dismissed and opposed. At the same time, Islamists have been suspicious of the socialist reaction to imperialism, in a sense, wishing a pox on both houses.

Leftists are quick to condemn Islamists as strategically obtuse, or worse craven, willing to collaborate with imperialists (Saudis from the start, Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s–60s against Nasserists), and to take CIA money (Afghanistan). There are those who denounce Hamas as an Israeli creation. Walberg looks closely at these arguments, based on his analysis of imperialist strategies during the past two centuries.

That Hamas possibly got support from Israeli sources is part of the age-old imperialist use of Islamists, but it has backfired. Hamas didn’t sell out. Fatah/PLO discredited themselves over decades and are now empty shells. The role of Hamas in exposing PLO hypocrisy and “holding the fort” against Israel has been proved decisively since it came to power in democratic elections in 2006.

From Postmodernism to Postsecularism: Re-emerging Islamic Civilization is a gripping and informative wake-up call to both sides of the anti-imperial equation, pulling together the many threads that can unite us, from Foucault’s “political spirituality,” to the Egyptian revolutionaries’ solidarity with America’s 99%, to the American Muslims’ support for the peace and ecology movements.

William T. Hathaway is an adjunct professor of American studies at the University of Oldenburg in Germany and a member of the Freedom Socialist Party (www.socialism.com). His latest book, Wellsprings, concerns the environmental crisis: http://www.cosmicegg-books.com/books/wellsprings. A selection of his writing is available at www.peacewriter.org.

 



The Creationists Had Already Won Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham Debate

The Editors Say: Trying to make reactionaries, ignoramuses and creationists (often interchangeable types) accept that creationism is bunk is as hard as convincing Obamabots that their idol is an evil, warmongering corporatist. In both cases facts, and clear reasoning, count for little or nothing.

The Atlantic Wire 

By Abby Ohlheiser, Feb 4, 2014

Bill Nye, The Science Guy, will debate Ken Ham, The Creationist Guy, tonight at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. They will debate a question from the 1920’s: “Is creation a viable model of origins in today’s modern scientific era?” Yes or no? This is a bad idea for everyone but the creationists.

Whatever his intention, Nye is sitting down as a representative of “evolution” against Ham, implying that there are two equal sides to a debate that has already been settled scientifically. By simply agreeing to participate, Nye is simultaneously elevating the proponents of Biblical creationism, while marginalizing his own position.

Ham is a young-Earth creationist. That means he believes the world is only seven thousand years old or so, because if you look at the Bible in the most literal way possible, that’s the timeline. God literally created the world in seven, 24-hour days, and so on from there. In a post on CNN promoting the debate(CNN will moderate the event), Ham lamented that “Several hundred well-attended debates [on creationism vs. evolution] were held in the 1970s and 1980s, but they have largely dried up in recent decades.” There is a reason those debates have dried up: Ham and his ilk have no factual ground to stand on.



Letters: The hunting mania and other degeneracies

Giraffe murdered, with proud at large murderer at the site. This image sums up the abject degeneracy of our civilization and utter uselessness and corruption of our so-called governments.

Giraffe murdered, with undisturbed murderer at the site of his crime. This image sums up the abject degeneracy of our civilization and the utter uselessness and corruption of the leaders who run our societies, to say nothing of the bankrupt media that does nothing to counteract these outrages. It is an indictment of a whole global system, and the pervasive, mostly unchallenged selfishness of our species.

To the editor:
 
I believe it was in one of your Greanville Posts that included a photo of a giraffe that some British asshole had just shot. He, his wife and their (young) children, were posing near and on it, all big smiles. I still haven’t gotten over that one. What kind of a degenerate would shoot a giraffe for crying out loud. What’s next on his list, the actual horse featured in Spielberg’s “War Horse?”
I’m glad you are publishing opinions on sport hunting aimed at discrediting it and the bottom-feeders who enjoy it.
 
A Swiftian solution to the wildlife plague
 
Here is a satirical little piece I wrote some time ago, since I’m most familiar with deer hunting in Texas. Please feel free to use it if you want. If you do, you might want to write a preface so that readers understand how wildlife management is handled in Texas and other states. Also, hunting magazines always use the euphemism ‘harvest’ rather than ‘kill.’ “Cull-small” is a wildlife management term for bucks with very small antlers. They should be readily shot (culled) to get them out of the gene pool, which would result in many more trophy bucks according to wildlife managers.
 
Here it is:
 
“Since wildlife management supposedly works so well with wildlife, its principles should be applied to the hunting cult itself in view of their declining numbers and cull-small ‘antlers’ [thinning hair, bad comb-overs (most deer hunters think of their hair as antlers)].  While many non-hunters and certainly all anti-hunting folks believe hunting accidents are causes for dancing in the street, there are simply not enough hunters accidently harvested every season to conserve and enhance hunter populations; i.e., increase their numbers and improve their trophy attributes like fuller heads of hair. In view of that disappointing deficiency, the commissioners that run the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department should develop and implement “hunter management” programs in which hunters harvest each other on hunt-the-hunter ranches that are surrounded by high-voltage fencing. Like the animals on killing ranches, we wouldn’t want these deviants to have a means of escape.
 
Hunters would use the same grossly unsportsmanlike hunting gadgets used for killing deer, but modified for human consumption. Electronically-timed and activated bait feeders would be filled with buttered popcorn or McDonald’s fries instead of corn. Hunters would lure other hunters out of hiding by pouring cheap perfume all over themselves and their surroundings. Drooling, sex-crazed hunters would come crashing out of the brush to “hunter calls” that imitate the moans of a porn star faking an orgasm. Life-size deer decoys would be replaced with life-size inflatable dolls with blond wigs. Rifle hunters would harvest rifle hunters, and bow hunters would shoot those little sticks into other bow hunters. An arrow stuck in his fat ass would certainly convince a shrieking hunter just how blatantly sadistic bow hunting is.
 
Just as wildlife management aims to produce lots of trophy bucks, hunter management could produce robust populations of trophy hunters with antlers like fight promoter Don King’s. Sadly, it would likely be abolished before any real progress could be made. Soccer moms and ladies who lunch would soon demand a stop to hunter management programs. The sight of jacked-up pickups speeding to and fro with dead trophy hunters piled up in their beds would prove almost as much of a distraction to those women as a bent-over construction worker’s butt cleavage. In addition to causing traffic mishaps, there would be a lot of bug-eyed precious little darlings late to school or karate lessons. Plus, no matter how rugged his face or how thick his perfectly-coiffed hair, the mounted head of an angry hunter would be as nauseating as mounted animal heads are to evolved men, women and children.”
 
Bill Buchanan_________

Beyond Capitalism

An Interview With Cynthia Kaufman
by ROBERT JENSEN, Counterpunch
kaufmanBook

I’m fond of books that don’t claim to have The Answer but instead are useful guides in our search for answers.

Such a volume is Cynthia Kaufman’s Getting Past Capitalism: History, Vision, Hope, which expresses in clear, concise language thoughts that likely have been bumping around in the minds of many of us who reject capitalism. The book is particularly powerful because of its modesty; Kaufman promises no new grand theory and instead offers insights that we all can use in our daily lives.

The only thing I didn’t like about the book when I first read it was its hefty hardcover price tag. Now the book has been released in a more affordable paperback, which sparked me to ask Kaufman to elaborate on her ideas.

A philosopher who draws on work from many disciplines, Kaufman is the director of the Institute of Community and Civic Engagement at De Anza College in Cupertino, CA, and also has experience as a union organizer and activist in the Central American solidarity movement and other struggles. She also is the author of the 2003 book, Ideas for Action: Relevant Theory for Radical Change.

Robert Jensen: Critiques of capitalism have been around since the beginning of capitalism. Is there anything distinctive about this moment? Mainstream society continues to operate as if “there is no alternative” to capitalism, but at the same time, the failures of capitalism are more evident than ever.

Cynthia Kaufman: Indeed, those failures are clear. The issue of inequality in this country, and the ways that money has captured our political system, are serious indicators of that. And climate change is a game-changer. We really are in serious trouble as a species if we stick with business as usual. We desperately need to find alternatives, and in fact we are surrounded by them.

Partially because these things have gotten so bad—but also because of the spectacular disaster caused by deregulation and the neoliberal model of capitalism on steroids that caused the world economic crash of 2008—people are beginning to see that the current system is not sustainable.  That has opened up, for example, the space for the surprisingly positive response to the Occupy movement when it sprang up in response to the crash.

RJ: How would you characterize the struggle against capitalism? You point out there is no “command center” to target. How should we think about this struggle?

CK: The main argument of the book is that capitalism is constituted by a varied of different practices, and so challenging capitalism needs to be about a variety of struggles. I draw on the important work of J.K. Gibson-Graham, who argues that we should model anti-capitalist struggle on feminist struggles. Second-wave feminists didn’t look for an overthrow of patriarchy. Instead, they analyzed what they were up against and fought it in all of its varied manifestations.

One of the problems with traditional anti-capitalist thought is that it defines capitalism as a totality, which encourages us to imagine another totality, socialism, which we can try to replace it with. This totalizing perspective has colonized the imagination of anti-capitalism and left us waiting for a revolution we can never have.

In the book I argue that we see ourselves as inhabiting a complex social world that has some capitalist things going on in it as well as some socialist ones, some communist ones, and many where economics are not separated out of the broader fabric of life (such as sharing and gift giving, and mutual  support). The way we get past capitalism is by building on the healthy non-capitalist aspects of our world while we also do pitched battle with the capitalist ones that we have a fair chance of winning against. In that way we build a better world and shrink the destructive capitalist practices that are part of the social fabric.

RJ: Although almost no one likes labels, in many situations we do have to apply labels to our politics. How do you describe yourself in the context of this critique of capitalism?

CK: That really depends on who I am talking to. I tend to not use the word “socialist,” because even though more young adults in the United States in a poll say they support socialism than do capitalism, the word socialism doesn’t have a lot of meaning in this country. Also, when I talk about alternatives to capitalism, socialism is one thing we need to build among many. I often refer to myself as a radical, reminding people that the word radical comes from the Latin word radix, meaning root. I think we need to get to the roots of problems as we try to solve them. I also like the word anti-capitalist.

I think a lot of people use the word progressive as a code for “left,” because it is a bold statement to call oneself a leftist in this country. I’m OK using whatever words communicate and get people with the program of building a socially just world.

RJ: How did you become a leftist?

CK: I grew up in a fairly non-political family. I come from a mixed Jewish and Catholic family with strong family memories of persecution, poverty, and class resentment. I grew up quite alienated from my surroundings in suburban San Diego, where white people were expected to be happy and content with the social world. I was always looking for ways to make life less flat and meaningless than it seemed to be. When I was 20, I read an article about U.S. support for the dictatorship in El Salvador. That moved me, and I contacted the organization mentioned in the article and asked if I could volunteer. I was quickly asked to do much more than that, and have been active in social justice politics ever since then. I now inhabit a social world full of meaning, inspiration, purpose, and interesting loving people.

RJ: Back to terms and labels. Help us understand the pros and cons of the terms we can use to describe a critique of capitalism. Let’s start with the three traditional terms from the left: socialist, communist, and anarchist.

CK: The terms socialist and communist are mostly about describing the world we want after capitalism, and I think they are both important. In my chapter on alternatives to capitalism I talk about the importance of pursuing multiple alternatives. I follow Richard Wolff and Steven Resnick in defining socialism as a mode of production in which the state is an important vector in taking and providing resources. States can be more or less democratic, and so can socialism. I think any ideal society that exists on a large scale, which is what we most likely have in store for us as a human race, will involve some aspects of socialism. Things like water and sewage systems require states in a large-scale society, but states are also a good mechanism for dealing with health care, education, public transportation, and infrastructure.

Communism then defines a society in which there are communal forms for dealing with resources. Many communal forms exist where there are not communist governments. The Mondragon cooperatives in Spain and the thousands of worker-owned cooperatives in the United States, are viable alternatives to capitalism.

For as long as I have been a leftist, I have been very sympathetic to anarchism, which I see as most importantly a critique of authoritarianism, and a caution against the accumulation of unjust forms of power. I think any healthy social movement needs some anarchist impulses to keep it honest. Anarchism as the name for an ideal total social form is a really complicated question. I have never found satisfying answers from anarchists about the definition of the state they are opposed to. Most are opposed to coercive forms of state power. Questions about large scale systems of organization and how they will be funded—those are questions it’s hard to get anarchists to give good answers to.

RJ: What about the seemingly endless debates about reform versus revolution?

CK: That is one of the most unproductive binaries in anti-capitalist thought. Most of the time, those terms function as frozen relics from debates within the German Social Democratic Party at the turn of the last century. In Marxism there are some very unhelpful ideas about the need to push for a revolution that will overturn all of society. Marx gets that from Hegel, and it leads to some very bad politics, such as the hope that things must get worse because that will then turn into the antithesis and get better from there. A kind of wishful thinking then grows out of not seeing a realistic path forward.

I think there is a legitimate critique of reformism, as a politics that is content with making small changes in society without asking for bigger and deeper changes. So in the book I talk about revolutionary reforms, meaning actions that we take in small ways to make the world a better place and disrupt some of the ways that capitalism is reproduced.

RJ: Is there an important distinction to be made between liberal and left?

CK: When I first came to political consciousness in the 1980s, it seemed important for people who shared my politics to call ourselves leftists and not liberals. Liberals were those who wanted a tolerant society but who weren’t willing to look at issues of power. Now after 30 years of the Reagan revolution with the liberal social welfare state under increasing attack, I think liberalism—meaning support for a welfare state and for public goods—needs to be defended. At this point in this country, it actually takes some courage to be liberal, and liberals are fighting for things I want them to be fighting for. So I’m all for liberalism, as well as leftism.

RJ: Based on your reading of the state of the world and what is possible through organizing and education, react to these pairs of words: optimism/pessimism.

CK: I am one who often quotes the Italian Marxist and anti-fascist philosopher Gramsci’s dictum that we should have pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will. This means that we should have the courage to look our social problems fully in the face and understand just how huge are the problems that we are up against. And yet, the second part of that means that we need to look for the places where a difference can be made, and put our hearts into those cracks and fissures. We need to hold in our hearts the possibility of a better world, not because we have candy-coated the problems or lied about what we can accomplish, but because we know that we do often win and make a difference, and that all the good things we have in the world are the results of those who have had the courage and commitment to have done this work before us.

RJ: Another pair: success/failure.

CK: There is a cultural norm on the left of being afraid to declare victory, which is related to the binary of reform/revolution. Whereas reformists are winning small gains, revolutionaries don’t want people to be satisfied with those small victories because they worry this will lead to acceptance of the bigger picture of capitalism domination, and so they find a way to turn every victory into a defeat. In the book, I call for a culture of declaring victory wherever we can. You build movements and keep people in a struggle when it feels productive. Anti-capitalists have typically been the people in movements who have declared every gain to be a trick of the capitalist class to buy us off. That line isn’t very inspiring, and it shows no sensitivity to how social movements actually succeed.

RJ: Finally, hope/despair.

CK: I put hope into the title of the book, and my first reviewer said it was both startling and refreshing to see the words hope and capitalism in the same title. I think one of the reasons anti-capitalists tend to not have much hope is related to the ways we conceptualize what we are up against. Yes it is true that pro-capitalist forces have a lot of power. But so did slave-holding racists. We give ourselves hope when we conceptualize capitalism as a set of practices that can be challenged by fighting the piece of the puzzle we feel most compelled to fight.

Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of  Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007). He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu and his articles can be found online at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/index.html.