Communique Amid the Electoral Farce, The Capitalist War Against the PeoplesWith the arrival of the “Fourth Transformation,” his government policy increased militarization toward indigenous peoples and communities, especially in Zapatista territory. Paramilitary groups and organized crime operate with complete impunity as guarantors of the imposition not only of deadly megaprojects such as the Maya Train, the Interoceanic Corridor and the Morelos Integral Project; they are at the service of the State and big capital to carry out the dispossession of land, Mother Earth and life. In the midst of their “ELECTORAL FARCE”, we see that, in recent weeks, nothing matters except their votes, their polls, their debates, their figures and their electoral preferences; but, above all, their strategy to attack and disqualify their enemies, as a campaign strategy. On June 2, a “democracy” is not in dispute, much less a leftist one. What is really at stake is an economic and political power that seeks to sustain itself through militarization, impunity, and the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few at the service of the big transnational corporations. Their plan is to sustain this “Fourth Transformation,” with a CAPITALIST WAR against indigenous peoples and communities. Faced with the impunity and violence imposed on our territories, from the National Assembly for Water and Life. . .
https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/06/08/communique-amid-the-electoral-farce-the-capitalist-war-against-the-peoples/Why the Center HoldsThe mainstream press is obsessed with Trump’s inner circle. In March, James Politi of the Financial Times wrote, “narrowly ahead in the polls against Joe Biden, Trump now has the backing of a small group of seasoned campaign operatives and a tightly knit entourage of former officials eager to apply his ideas.” In another article titled, “How MAGA Republicans plan to make Donald Trump’s second term count,” the Economist observes that “a professional corps of America First populists are dedicating themselves to ensuring that Trump Two will be disciplined.” Rather than allow the GOP intelligentsia (who, according to this narrative, constrained Trump’s America First agenda) to infiltrate the White House again, a cadre of true believers will unquestioningly execute his plans to shut down the US-Mexico border, unleash political retribution on his enemies, and slap tariffs on all Chinese-made goods. There is undeniably something appealing to this analysis. Vaguely Gramscian, such journalism promises insight into the “organic intellectuals” behind Trumpism. An America First inner circle also furnishes an easy target against which to organize, for now there will be no “adult in the room” to mask Trump’s authoritarianism. The problem with these stories, however, is that unlike Gramsci they do not follow the trail down to civil society, the hidden abode where we might find the social and institutional bases of the Republican Party. On such accounts, the intellectual movement behind MAGA emerged as if from the ether to undermine the once dominant politics of compromise. But the question of why Trump has been able to take hold of the Republican Party only becomes pressing in contrast to the inability of Bernie Sanders, or any other left-wing challenger, to do the same. Absent in the inner circle narrative is a discussion of the enduring strength of the Democrats. In 2008 and 2020, the party was able to hold together the New Deal coalition, relying on networks of association created during the Roosevelt and civil rights eras. So sedimented were these institutions that Sanders, whose program was popular with the multiracial working class, was unable to gain a foothold. The origins of the differences between the Republican and Democratic parties lie in the long history, and transformation, of both since the nineteenth century.
https://jacobin.com/2024/06/democratic-party-center-institutions-trumpism(1915) Rosa Luxemburg: The Junius Pamphlet: The Crisis of German Social Democracy Chapter 1In the midst of this witches’ sabbath a catastrophe of world-historical proportions has happened: International Social Democracy has capitulated. To deceive ourselves about it, to cover it up, would be the most foolish, the most fatal thing the proletariat could do. Marx says: “…the democrat (that is, the petty bourgeois revolutionary) [comes] out of the most shameful defeats as unmarked as he naively went into them; he comes away with the newly gained conviction that he must be victorious, not that he or his party ought to give up the old principles, but that conditions ought to accommodate him.”[3] The modern proletariat comes out of historical tests differently. Its tasks and its errors are both gigantic: no prescription, no schema valid for every case, no infallible leader to show it the path to follow. Historical experience is its only school mistress. Its thorny way to self-emancipation is paved not only with immeasurable suffering but also with countless errors. The aim of its journey – its emancipation depends on this – is whether the proletariat can learn from its own errors. Self-criticism, remorseless, cruel, and going to the core of things is the life’s breath and light of the proletarian movement. The fall of the socialist proletariat in the present world war is unprecedented. It is a misfortune for humanity. But socialism will be lost only if the international proletariat fails to measure the depth of this fall, if it refuses to learn from it. ..
https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1915/junius/ch01.htm