Lefteast
Four men lie dead before me tonight. Their faces are pixelated on my screen. There is blood on their garments, on their skin, on the parched soil where their corpses are dumped. Their mouths open in a moment of silence, and there are boots in a corner. Twenty years ago in March 2003, our cries […]
An interview with a representative from the Academy of Democratic Modernity by Stoyo Tetevenski, LevFem What is the Academy of Democratic Modernity? The perspective of Democratic Modernity is coming from the Kurdish movement as an alternative system to Capitalist Modernity. It was developed by Abdullah Öcalan. The aim of the Academy of Democratic Modernity is […]
The following report back from Finland by Kyle Bailey looks at a nascent protest movement against the sudden shift in Finnish public opinion when it comes to NATO membership. The Russian military’s recent aggression against Ukraine has effectively upended a key mainstay of Finland’s post-WWII diplomacy, which was built around official neutrality. In the space of a few months, this consensus has been shattered and a new consensus seems to be emerging instead around accelerated NATO membership. This short piece gives insight into the narrowing space of public debate in Finland on these issues, and highlights how a small coalition of progressive groups are attempting to challenge the militarization such a decision is surely to bring in its wake.
If we want to respond to the tragedy in ways that will help the victims, and avert still worse catastrophes that loom ahead, it is wise, and necessary, to learn as much as we can about what went wrong and how the course could have been corrected. Heroic gestures may be satisfying. They are not […]
1. In June 2020, not anticipating the current moment, I rhetorically asked about the liberal project of reviving the economy in Baricada Romania: does the state save capital and support militarization?[1] I noticed then, that unlike the crisis of 2008-2009, economic recovery was taking place through the excessive militarization of Romania and its engagement in […]
Note from LeftEast editors: this article originally appeared on International Viewpoint, we reprint it with permission. I did not sign the Feminist Manifesto Against War, although I share (as I told the comrade who sent it to me) many aspects of this Manifesto, signed by women whom I hold in high esteem. I hope that my […]
After a long winter of the covid-19 pandemic, the first glimpses of a coming spring offer a vision of new bloodshed. We have now witnessed more than a week of Russian invasion and war on Ukraine, a stretch of time that will be seen as an undeniable rupture in international relations. Things are moving at […]
Oksana Dutchak is a researcher based in Ukraine and an activist of E.A.S.T. – Essential Autonomous Struggles Transnational. She tells about the current ever-changing situation in Ukraine and local attempts of self-organization to cope with the war. The question of how to create a transnational politics of peace has no easy answer. Continuing to mobilize […]
The inter-imperialist conflicts we see between NATO and Russia (or the US and China, as well as many smaller conflicts) are ultimately rooted in national economic competition, which itself is an outgrowth of the competition inherent to capitalism. To finally wipe out the drive to war means ending capitalism altogether. But that is no excuse for an abstract position that the only thing we can do now is call for revolution, as some on the far left are doing. War enflames national divisions and is most damaging to working people. It needs to be resisted and ended immediately. It is the end of wars, especially when opposed from below, that can open space for continued class conflict and the further struggle for socialism in Ukraine and beyond.
Do not let half-baked political positions substitute an analysis of the situation. The injunction that the main enemy is in your country should not translate into a flawed analysis of the inter-imperialist struggle. At this stage appeals to dismantle NATO or, conversely, accepting anyone there, will not help those who suffer under the bombs in Ukraine, in jails in Russia or Belarus. Sloganeering is harmful as ever. Branding Ukrainians or Russian fascists only makes you part of the problem, not part of the solution. A new autonomous reality emerges around Russia, a reality of destruction and harsh repressions, a reality where a nuclear conflict is not unthinkable anymore. Many of us have missed the tendencies leading to this reality. In the fog of war, we do not see clearly the contours of the new. Neither do, as it seems, the American or European governments.