From the July-August 2014 issue of News & Letters
RESPONSES TO MARXIST-HUMANIST PERSPECTIVES
The Marxist-Humanist Perspectives (N&L, May-June 2014) give a critical assessment of the polarization between the oppressive forces of capital’s social relations and humanity’s efforts to realize human dignity. It shows humans are not just passive victims of capital. First [=>]
Facts on the ground threaten to spin out of control, increasing the danger of a full regional war in the eastern region, the possibility of dismemberment of Ukraine, and an intensification of U.S.-Europe vs. Russia saber-rattling. However, these are only the latest moments of the “pseudo-concrete”–the false alternatives that have arisen, seeking to usurp the movement of self-determination that was manifest in the Maidan Nezaleznosti (Independence Square) occupation in Ukraine’s capital, Kiev.
On April 12, 2014, Kyiv hosted a conference The Left and the Maidan which brought together activists from anarchist, socialist and communist organisations that had been involved in the Maidan movement in late 2013–early 2014. The large number of participating activists who represent the various political groups and initiatives evolving as a part of the Maidan movement is clear evidence against the alleged absence of the Left in the Maidan movement. The discussion was centered on why the Left failed to take an organisational form and become as visible a factor of the Maidan as the right.
Revolution and counter-revolution contend now, while the prolonged global capitalist economic crisis refuses to end. The question arises: where is the needed banner of total uprooting of the system and creation of new human relations as the goal? This objective need is present in every struggle from outright revolution in the Middle East to movements in the U.S. Beset by attacks and contradictions, they have in turn sparked counter-revolutions.
In Ukraine, an unexpected eruption of mass struggle led to the overthrow of Ukraine’s corrupt, oligarchic, and ultimately murderous President Viktor Yanukovych. In Bosnia, at the same time, massive, nationwide discontent with the corrupt system left in place when the 1995 Dayton Accords partitioned the country has led to the equally unexpected creation of new forms of democratic organization.
Kiev was host to an historic international gathering of workers’ organizations from four formerly Soviet nations that demonstrated the development of a new independent labor movement in Ukraine, now very active in the huge democratic-revolutionary movement.
