RevolutionZ
RevolutionZ
Ep 389 Francine Mestrum On Obstacles to Winning
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Episode 389 of RevolutionZ has as guest Francine Mestrum, a longtime social justice researcher and organizer whose work spans globalization, poverty, inequality, social protection, public services, gender, and the “social commons” approach to economic and social rights. She has marched, organized, and built a campaigns and organizations and yet felt like the world barely moved. And she has thought about why. Her experience in networks tied to the World Social Forum has given her a wide and deep view of what movements do well and what keeps failing. What obstacles impede winning.
She highlights two painful patterns. We show up, we do great work for a moment, but soon everything stops. And, when we show up we are not all together. We are atomized. Some are for this, some are for that, and we do not help each other with this and with that. So next time, we start as if from scratch. We struggle to have, and often even struggle against having unity.
Francine argues that without continuity between actions and real convergence across movements, we will stay trapped in atomized issue and time-bound silos. So we talk about why groups protect their identity, why alliances with trade unions are so often contested, and why cross border organizing still feels out of reach even as crises go global.
Then we go a layer deeper. We ask why the left often acts like winning is impossible and how that defeatism fuels sectarian fights, vague slogans, and refusal to define key terms. Francine calls it a crisis of imagination: thousands of small solutions exist, but we have no shared narrative for a better world able to inspire and orient. Pursuing answers we dig into working class politics and dignity, and why the right can offer belonging and a sense of efficacy even while failing materially and yet advance. We ask, what would it take for the left to reconnect through material demands, inspiring solidarity, and organized power?
Welcome And Guest Background
SPEAKER_00Hello, my name is Michael Albert, and I am the host of the podcast that's titled Revolution Z. This is our 389th consecutive episode, and this time our guest is Francine Mestrom. Francine's current research concerns the social dimension of globalization, poverty, inequality, social protection, public services, and gender. Looking each time at the meanings and the semantic dynamic of concepts and words. She also works on a social commons, a concept allowing for a common, active, and participatory approach to economic and social rights and hence citizenship. Francine has practical experience with educational programs in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. For 20 years, she was an active member of the International Council of the World Social Forum and was a part of the International Organizing Committee of the Asia Europe People's Forum, co-responsible for the Social Justice Cluster. In this context, she worked on an initiative for the renewal of the World Social Forum along with Boventura de Susa Santos and Roberto Savio. It allowed for the creation of a separate and autonomous Global Social Assembly of Struggles and Resistance of the WSF. She is the founder of the Global Network of Global Social Justice, publishing a monthly newsletter and a member of the Global Coalition for Social Protection Floors. Among many other activities, she's a member of the editorial board of uh UITPERS, an e-zine on foreign relations, where she mainly writes on Latin America, Europe, development, and international organizations. She's written several books in Dutch, French, and English on development, the World Bank, Poverty, Inequality, and Social Commons. In other words, Francine has been around and has done a lot, and uh uh we welcome you. I welcome you to uh Revolution Z. Your most recent book, I think, was Make Poverty Legal, an agenda for social justice. Again, in English, Spanish, French, and Dutch. Did you really write it yourself in all those languages?
SPEAKER_04Sure, but you have now translation programs that help you.
SPEAKER_00Sure. I have trouble writing in English, and that's only one language. Anyway, the book gives a short history on social thinking in the past half century and analyzes uh the new ideas that are now being promoted. Francine lives in Brussels, Belgium, where she's talking to me from, uh, but spends the cold European winters in the city of Eternal Spring, Guernavaca, Mexico. So, Francine, welcome to Revolution Z.
Why Movements Stall After Events
SPEAKER_03Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. Very happy to be here with you.
SPEAKER_00The proximate cause of my asking you to be here, to be a guest on this episode, was a piece you recently wrote in which you raised a good many issues of strategy that don't often get sufficient attention, at least in my opinion, uh, much less definitive attention. It was all in response to a discussion of national social strikes. For example, in your piece, you asked, is organization really necessary? Isn't it conceivable that a spontaneous outburst of anger might occur after a government takes a measure perceived as unjust and spur on a national social strike? But then you indicate to oust a national government, organization is probably needed, agreements, division of tasks, a timetable, and so on. Around which themes? They must be issues that appeal to everyone, otherwise, it will never succeed. There are plenty of possible themes. And I wonder what were you seeking to convey with those words, which were essentially quotations? What kind of a discussion were you trying to open up?
SPEAKER_04Well, as you said in the introduction, I have been very active in many social movements in the past 20 or 30 years. And um, that experience, in fact, looking back, has not been that positive in terms of results. It was a very good period. I mean, I made many friends and we did a lot of very good work, I think. But there are no results really. And I think it has to do with the very often unwillingness of movements to work together. Or maybe they're just not able to do it. And that makes it all very different. Even if you work on one single topic, my topic is social justice, but even on that topic, it has been very difficult to work with other movements together. You can organize a workshop, you can organize a seminar, you may do things together during one event, and then it stops. If you do not go, if you do not continue, if you do not have a program for the next event, and make sure there is some continuity between event number one and event number two, then I think there is a problem. And that is only on working on one single issue. Now, if you if you add different issues, I mean, social justice clearly has to do with the economy, it has to do with taxes, it has to do with the debt problem, then you arrive in an environment that makes it almost impossible to have results further, going beyond one single event. And that is the problem. That is what we missed very much in the World Social Forum. Because this was single event, World Social Forum, you had hundreds of movements or thousands of movements coming together, did some very good work, and then it stops.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And next year you start all over again. And there is never any convergence, and there is no continuity.
SPEAKER_00So I I think you've identified two things there. One is um a short timeline. Uh we have our eyes on the present, we pick out a topic, and it may be different for different groups, and uh somehow we don't have a longer timeline. We're in the immediate. And then the other time, other thing, I want you to correct me if I'm missing something here. Uh the other thing that seems to be that we're atomized, that uh each each focus is focused and does good work on what it's doing, but it isn't either helping or being helped by the other focuses. And those two things you're saying have made you feel like, okay, maybe we held off bad things, but we didn't last win many lasting good things. And I tend to agree with you about this. And but a question arises what is in the minds of us, of people who identify problems and care and are courageous and thoughtful and all the rest of it, right? But don't apparently look further than the immediate and don't apparently get over the uh difficulty of working together. What prevents those two things? That's a hard question, but if we don't answer it, we're stuck with what you've seen and what I've seen, you know.
Identity Barriers Block Real Coalitions
SPEAKER_04I think there are two types of answers. The most easy answer is that just with some organization, you can make the convergence and the continuity real. But this supposes that you have one or more persons who make the contacts the contact uh permanent between two events. I'm calling movement A and movement B and movement C and try to bring issues together. That is the easy answer, but it is a very important answer because if you do not have that organization, nothing happens and you have to start all over again. The second answer is somewhat more difficult because every organization, every movement has its identity and will not easily abandon that identity or parts of that identity. There are many movements working with poor people, for instance, that do not want to work with trade unions. Whereas trade unions, I think, that is my personal opinion, are central to the whole question of social justice. But if you have movements that say we do not want to work with trade unions, you have a real problem. Now, once you start working on different topics, again take social justice and take debts and take people who care for the elderly or for disabled people, for instance, they might tell you look, what you're saying is very interesting, but we do not have a mandate to go beyond our own specific issues. And then again, you're blocked and you cannot you cannot go on. And that is what uh we have been doing for more than 20 years, and it's still going on, and and you do not get anywhere. So I think that if if if we want to try and make a bigger movement, um we we we should overcome these these uh breaks, these difficulties. And that is really very difficult because it it demands a willingness of all the movements to look beyond their own single small environment and topic.
SPEAKER_00Okay, I I agree with you that those are real obstacles. And I especially appreciate your warning, your advice, that if you don't overcome obstacles, you're not getting, you're not going forward. They are obstacles, they're in the way, you have to overcome them. So you must pay attention to them in a priority way. Atomization, almost everybody who's broadly on the left admits that that's a problem. It's not as if everybody doesn't know that's a problem. I'm not so sure about the duration problem. In other words, the the having a I I don't know whether everybody is aware of that, but it certainly is real. But what I'm asking Francine is I think a little bit deeper. That is, okay, why does it keep, why does it persist? Why don't people say to themselves like you said to yourself, what the fuck? You know, we're killing ourselves, we're not succeeding as much as we want, we're doing a lot of good things, but it's not, it's not what we're trying to do at in the large. What's the obstacle? I don't think people even ask that question. It isn't just that they don't want to do the thing that follows. I don't even think they ask the question.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00You know, and so then the what inhibits that? In other words, what what is it that causes people to be willing to? It's like a a sports team that doesn't ask how you win. Yeah, you know, it's like a professional sports team that plays every week, loses every week, and never says, or at least doesn't win in a sustained way that goes really to a championship, right? And it never says, what are we doing wrong? You know what it doesn't even say that. It isn't that the answer is too hard to do, it doesn't even ask. I think you see the same thing. And I'm asking you if you can solve it for me.
SPEAKER_04Yes, I cannot solve it, but I can I can try to give some elements of the answer. The first thing is that in the past, the recent past, many movements did not see the need for going beyond. Because they're working on their own topic, they think they're doing good work, and they are doing good work, right? And there it stops. It's not not the that the sports.
SPEAKER_00But then what's missing? Why is that satisfactory?
SPEAKER_04For them is not satisfactory. For them it is satisfactory if their own movement can take a little step step forward in one year. That's it.
SPEAKER_00What if they believed what if they believed you could win a new society?
SPEAKER_04They were not working on new society.
SPEAKER_00They were they believed you could win it? You don't think they would they would be part of the process?
SPEAKER_04I mean, once once they see the need that they can go beyond, that you can apply.
SPEAKER_00The possibility.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. And that is what we have been seeing in the more recent months. I mean, uh the situation in the world today is really terrible. And now you see, all of a sudden, there's some initiatives. I mean, there has been, but that is not at the level of movement, at the level of of politics. You have seen we have seen that that rather important meeting in Barcelona of the Social Democratic parties. That's the first time in so many years they're doing this. Um we we are seeing these uh flotillas going to Gaza, going to Cuba. This did not happen in the past. Now it is happening. So what we still need is a peace movement coming together and doing something. And that is terribly difficult because ideologically they are not on the same line. And even if you look at purely the left-wing movements, you will see they have many problems. There was this uh important anti-fascist uh conference in uh Porto Alegre, Brazil, a couple of weeks ago. Very important. But there again you see the left against the left, because for the left the major enemy is the other left, and then they go on fighting, and they are still not at the point of saying, look, we have to go beyond. They're still not there yet. We see this in all countries. And another another problem, and maybe especially in Europe. Many people do not see the need to go beyond borders. They think they can solve the problem within their own country, and they're not prepared to go and talk to people of other countries. I mean, there is an enormous way to go. And if only we could take a couple of steps to to to start that movement, to start building something global, to start some conver building some convergence. I I think the World Social Forum started in 2001. That is almost that is exactly 25 years ago. If we had started then with organizing, really organizing, coming together, working at convergence, working at building bridges between movements, then 20 years later I think we should have reached something. And now we have nothing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, see, I I tell the same story, but I start in 1967.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, sure.
SPEAKER_00You know, and and the tremendous we did a tremendous amount. I mean, there's not you know, it's not as if we didn't do anything. We did a lot.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely.
The Hidden Belief That We Lose
SPEAKER_00And we addressed, say, the war in Indochina, etc. But we didn't do much at the level of institutions and institutional change. I want to try a hypothesis with you, if you're willing here. To my thinking, same problem, right? Same obstacle to try and overcome. To me, it has seemed for a long time like the essence of the problem, or at least a big part of the problem, is that people don't believe we can win. So if you don't believe that it's possible to do more than have an a nice effect, uh, you know, an ameliator of effect on the pain, or maybe at this moment stopping fascism, people do believe that's possible, right? But you don't believe it's possible to eliminate, to overcome the causes of injustice, then the behavior all starts to make some sense in the following sense. If you can't win in the large, the discomfort of trying to get it to get all the atoms to work together and the discomfort comfort of worrying about the future aren't worth it because they won't lead anywhere, because you can't win anyway. So I have this feeling that it isn't just the public who is prevented from, you know, the non-active part of the world that's prevented from acting by cynicism, it's also the left. I mean that at some very deep level, it's the left. Um whatever you think about them, that was not true for, you know, the Cubans. That was not true for the Vietnamese. That was not if they it isn't just that they were desperate. They thought they could win. And they fought to do it. And if something was uncomfortable, too bad. You know, that's what you have to go through to win, you know. That to me has seemed to be the problem. Now the problem would be well, okay, so how do you overcome that? Um does that make any sense to you as an underlying cause?
SPEAKER_04Sure, absolutely. Um, that is what some people call the lack of of or the crisis of imagination. Yeah. We do not have a narrative for a better world. We do not have it. I mean, we have thousands of small narratives of possible solutions for specific problems. We do not have a narrative for a better world. And there again, if you try to start that discussion, and I have tried many times, they don't believe you. They think they think it's it's too ambitious. You should not do this. We should start at the local level. And yes, that's true, we should start at the local level, but we should also think beyond that local level, and beyond that national level. And that is we we're not there yet. We're not there. And and indeed, people think they cannot win. They can only win, maybe at the local level, and organize their own alternative, their own specific ecological or social alternative. That is happening all over the world, but nothing that goes beyond.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, I that you know, it goes even further. When you when you think you can't ultimately win, one thing you can do is try to ameliorate the pain in the short run. We do that. Um another thing you can do is have friends. You know, in other words, you're I mean, literally, you're you're in the left because you because it's it's uplifting, you know, and you get some. So you you have your community. It's not so different from the right. And the other thing you can do is look good. That is to say, instead of being strategic about winning, we're trying to figure out how to look good and how to appeal to the people who already like us and stuff like that. And that gets down to the left fighting the left.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00Right? I mean, it really does. Because, well, they're different I they don't look good. I I and I have to stand up to them, or my side might not like me. You know, and it's it's not a pretty picture, but it's there.
SPEAKER_04It's certainly there, and there is still within the left, there is still a lot of sectarian. Absolutely. And that is so difficult to overcome. So difficult because sometimes you can find agreement on a very general topic. Let's say we want democracy. Okay, we all agree we want democracy. But don't start talking about what it means, because you'll say it doesn't work. And that is also what happened at the anti-fascist conference a couple of weeks ago. You start talking about fascism, and then someone says, yes, but in fact it is anti-imperialism.
SPEAKER_00And then But you see how it makes certain sense. Let's say I've been an academic or I've been an activist and I have focused on something, imperialism. Somebody comes along and says anti-fascism, and I can't seem to comprehend that we're really talking about the same fucking thing, right? Because if you don't use my words, then I'm not elevated and I'm not, you know, and so there's even the sectarianism, not always, but often stems from this kind of weakness of defeatism. And but then how do you generate confidence is what it comes down. I mean, at some level, how do you generate the feeling that it is possible to win and a vision that you're trying to actually attain? I guess you just work on it. That's what I've tried to do. But it hasn't worked very well. I haven't succeeded either, you know.
Building Shared Vision And Definitions
SPEAKER_04Talking and talking and talking is what you need, but there comes a moment when you think it doesn't work. I mean but yep, that's the only the only answer, I think. Dialogue and and and continuing to admit well, I myself I'm almost given up. I mean it's uh you know because you get tired. And and the problem is referring to what you were saying about fashionable anti-imperialism, we we not only lack a narrative, we also lack definitions. Definitions, oh yeah. We we are very often talking about problems using the same words, but meaning true.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And then you you you you point to that and say, please let us first start to give a definition of the topic we're talking about. Oh no, no, no, we won't do that. Okay, we will do it, and you go on.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's uh but see again, uh when you say we need a shared vision, we need shared language so we understand each other. Yeah, we need all those things in order to win. But in order to elevate myself, I don't need uh, you know, I need my language to be dominant, my language to win. And you see, I mean, it all does, I mean, there's a story you can tell anyway, in which cynicism and the feeling that we can't win is at the root of a lot of this shit. But whatever's at the root of it, uh you and I agree, we have to overcome it. And what befuddles me is how many people don't even think there's an issue.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, exactly. But I do think that again, you have to start at the local level and try to convince the people that are directly working with you, one, that you can win, that we have to work at the narrative, that we have to work at talking to others beyond our own group. I mean, because what we have been talking about now, it it it seems very pessimistic. But I think there are many reasons for being optimistic. And the the the worst the situation in the world is getting, I think people are feeling the need really to do something, to come together. And I think it is possible, and I in fact I'm sure that it will happen maybe very soon.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I mean I tend to agree with you. But the irony here might be that well, if if you look at the United States, the the the organizations on the left that have generated massive outpourings, you know, millions of people against Trump are not the sophisticated left. It just isn't. It's people who are uh you know aroused, upset, angry, uh but they're not incredibly well read on the left or anything like that. They're not those people. And so what you have is uh something new coming along and growing, but it still falls short of having a real vision and and uh realizing that stuff. But it may. And I agree with you, it can happen very quickly, so we'll have to see. But there remains the question of what the people who've uh I mean, you and I are not uh new. Um we've been at it for a long time. So what are the people who've been at it for a long time, who've thought about it a lot, who write, who speak, who communicate. What is what is our task? I mean, when I look at what appears in left writing, it is so overwhelmingly telling people that poverty hurts, hunger hurts, war hurts, which everybody already knows, and not telling people here's how to deal with it, here's what we might be able to do to win, let's debate that and come to some agreement and act on it. That's not there very much. So I think it's our fault.
SPEAKER_04I mean, it depends on the countries. I mean that's probably true, yeah. I live in a small country, a very rich country, that is Belgium, but we have a right-wing government now with a very severe austerity policy. And again, just what you said. What is happening now is that people who are not on the left, who have never been on the streets, but they are taking away their pensions. They see that their wages are going down. And so they do join the big demos that are now organized. And they have never been on the streets before, but now they are. And they learn about the problems. And they get I think in Brussels.
SPEAKER_00No, I'm saying where do they in other words, those people are starting to come out, right? Isn't it our responsibility to do something that helps those people get beyond just their pensions? You know, and just yeah.
SPEAKER_04Absolutely. But that is for these people, it is the first time, very often, yeah, they hear other people talk about what can be done and what should be done. And in the first place, why the pensions are going down and why the pensions are being taken away. And that is what they l well when they learn about the bigger problems. And not all will join the big movement, but some will. And I think that is again for this specific uh social problem, a very important role for the trade unions. And we still have important trade unions, luckily. But they are the ones that and they are organized. They're contrary to many other movements, trade unions are organized, and they can mobilize people, and they can teach people what can be done and what should be done and how it should be done. And I think that is tremendously important. And you have again, you have to start at the local level convincing people that something is possible, that solutions do exist, but that if you want those solutions, you have to talk with other people, and you have to uh uh work slowly if we have the time, but that there are solutions and that you can do something.
Working Class Abandonment And Union Power
SPEAKER_00There's another I don't know what to call it, um phenomenon, an obstacle, I think, anyway. It's easy, or at least I I see it in the US and I don't know about elsewhere, so I want to ask you about this too. So in the US, incredibly to my mind, the uh let's call it the experienced left often just exhibits hostility toward normal non-left people simply because they're not left, and more and more hostility, for example, toward working people who, because of their horrendous conditions and because of the way the left has treated them, went to Trump, and now they're written off completely as being despicable, and I actually think that without them we're not going anywhere. And so, you know, so that that too seems incredible, and it seems to be a function of a class dynamic, you know, a a dynamic in this case that is people who look down on the working class because it is so so subordinated, instead of appreciating it and even learning from it, we actually have probably a lot to learn from MAGA about certain things. And it's very hard to get that across to anybody on the left who just oh my god, they're not, you know, they're they're despicable. And again, it seems like if you can't if you think you can't win and you can't accomplish anything, there the reaction is okay, you know, it's a sensible reaction. But if you think you can win, it's like giving away the weapon.
SPEAKER_04You know, it's like Yes, right. Yeah. What we have in Europe, in most countries, um, or most countries as I know, let's say Western Europe, it's very much on the left and on the ecological movement, the Greens, a kind of abandoning working class because we now have other values. And we have we have a word in Dutch for it, but that will it will will not help you. But uh all material concerns are abandoned. And these precisely are the things that are very important for working class people. Because what they want is bread on the table. What they want is going on holiday, just like all other people are doing.
SPEAKER_00But I also think they want dignity and they want a sense of efficacy. That's what the right gives them.
SPEAKER_04Exactly.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. Because the right hasn't given much material benefit either. But they have given an identity and a sense of efficacy and belonging and being respected, and somebody's got your back.
SPEAKER_04The right is doing that for working people, and the left just uh no, the the the the the left is the left is abandoning material points and making making of the whole crisis something very psychological. And that is not giving dignity. It is uh very often worsening the problem and pretending you can solve the problem with just bringing people together for a meal, for a spaghetti, for for I don't know what it is if if if you if you forget the the the uh the class problem and the material concerns that are very real, then you cannot even start thinking of of of solutions and of of a bigger It's true, but when you look at MAGA, right, in the United States, yeah, that it's not delivering any material well-being to its working class voters.
SPEAKER_00Quite the opposite. Are they what? Promising it. Yeah, they did promise it, but uh, or at least they sort of promised it, but they don't deliver at all. But they did deliver something else. You know, they did deliver, we respect you, as compared to Hillary Clinton. You're just you're despicable, right? And and it's not just Hillary Clinton who says that, it's a whole lot of people who say that. And, you know, to my mind, again, this is the U.S., it might be different, but you live in a rural area in the United States. The government does look like it's just an annoying, you know, interloper telling you how to behave, and meanwhile, you're dying of overdoses and you're hungry and everything else, and along comes Trump and promises you something.
unknownSure.
SPEAKER_00And also seems to appreciate you, or at least not to denigrate you, and you go for it. But those people are exactly the people who have every reason to side with a sensible left, you know.
SPEAKER_04In Europe, this is the crisis of social democracy that has totally integrated the neoliberal ideology. And that means the forgetting working class, because they are considered to be the privileged class that has too many rights, too high wages, etc., etc. And they're they have been, let's say, focusing on middle classes and and and and so on. And that is the reason why now in almost all European countries, social democracy is slowly disappearing. Because they've forgotten their material basis of the working class.
SPEAKER_00Well, but wait, it's it's it's disappearing as a vehicle uh for getting rid of class division and and for winning a new society, but it's not disappearing as a vehicle for benefiting uh professionals, uh what I call the coordinator class, uh the empowered workers, the lawyers, the doctors, the engineers, they're doing fine, right?
SPEAKER_04Right, but if you look at the at the numbers, um statistics of elections, you see a downward trend for social trend of what?
SPEAKER_00I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_04Of of the votes. Elections.
SPEAKER_00Oh, of votes for the social democrats. Yeah, sure, because the working class votes are disappearing. Exactly.
SPEAKER_04They're going to the extreme right.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, and that's true in the United States also. It's the decline of the Democratic Party, which is not a social democratic party, but the Social Democrats in the United States, so Sanders, AOC, this guy who just emerged, Platner in Maine, Donnie in New York, they're on the rise. Seriously so. And that is some, you know, that's not a bad thing, that's a good thing, and we'll see where it leads.
SPEAKER_04There is now a very strong campaign going on globally, I think, to delegitimize all left-wing ideas. And if you tell people that the solutions offered by the left will never work and they are not possible, then part of the people start to believe that.
SPEAKER_00Sure. Especially when the left doesn't respond.
SPEAKER_04Exactly.
SPEAKER_00I mean, it used to be the case when I was in like 1968, 1969, people would come up to us and they would say, I know what you're against. You know, you don't have to keep repeating that. I get it, I understand. Uh, but what are you for? And we took it, and it sometimes was a mean-spirited attempt to get us to shut the hell up. Since, you know, in other words, we didn't really have a vision, and so by saying, What are you for? They could shut us up. And so we and we dismissed, therefore, the question. But the question was totally legitimate, right? Why should somebody back a movement that's not for anything or that's for something which will wind up being even worse than what we endure now? Um and you know, that's such a simple lesson to learn.
What We Are For And Who Speaks
SPEAKER_04But we do not have the answers. Uh that's clear, we do not have the answers, and in a way that is positive as well, because if the answer has to come from one or two or three persons, it can never it can never work. But uh, but I do think um, I really do think that what I already said when the situation gets worse, something will happen.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but what could happen is is the experience of the past years.
SPEAKER_04But it's sorry, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Just the worsening of the situation is not enough because that can also lead to to disaster. Um so the the problem is that you're identifying still need to be overcome, even with even with the impetus that Trump gives us, say, in the United States. I mean, after all, who organized those demonstrations? Well, partly it was good, caring, working people, and partly it was Donald Trump who organized all those demonstrations. It's true, you know? And uh so even with the impetus that he gives us, in some sense, to have it come out to something positive and to derail him, derail fascism, and go forward, that's gonna take overcoming the kinds of obstacles that you're identifying. I mean, you there's a feeling of sort of desperation or frustration that develops. So for myself, so you can um, you know, I've written a ridiculously large amount about economic vision and social vision and strategy and so on. It gets, you know. And so all of a sudden I decided, all right, I gotta try a new way of communicating because I don't not believe in the message, I just don't not getting across.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00So now it's on to writing an oral history of the next American revolution.
SPEAKER_02Right. Right.
SPEAKER_00So it's people from the future who have succeeded telling us how they and you can see it's sort of grasping at straws in a sense. I mean, it's trying to find how do we talk about this stuff in a way that can move the discussion forward.
SPEAKER_04That's what we need to look for. That's what we that's what we need to do. And and if you ask what our task can be, I I would say continue, continue, continue what we have been doing. There is no other way. There is no other way. And try to convince other people and try to show that the the neoliberal and the fascist solution do not work for all.
SPEAKER_00But you you do know that one of the definitions of insane is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different solution.
SPEAKER_04That that was one of the sentences that was in one of the texts.
SPEAKER_00Um we we we do not want to repeat all the old uh all the old uh so we do have to find some change, but I tell myself, okay, that's fair enough when somebody is proposing the same structure as the past, the same strategy as the past, and the same vision as the past, and expecting different. Okay, that's insane. I'll go along with that. But if we discuss, if we that's something new, at least maybe, you know. Are there any people, I mean, I don't know, you know, there was Corbyn for a little while. Um maybe I'm just ignorant. Well, no, I am just ignorant, but in the US, on the left, if you look forty years ago or whatever, there were prominent leftists who communicated with everybody with everybody on the left in a sense. All right. So Chomsky, uh, for example, was doing that in the United States and and Howard Zarious people. That's sort of absent now. On the other hand, of late, we have Social Democrats who are doing that. You know, Mom Donnie and Platinum AOC, and they are pretty good. You know, they're they're feisty and they're tough and they're coming out swinging. There's some more steps that they could take, but there's an absence of revolutionary voices that are heard. Is that true in Europe too?
SPEAKER_04Because I'm unaware of people in Europe who no, I guess Corbin is one of the very few, absolutely. General Corbin. And uh one movement that I trust and um have some hope with is the movement that was created by Yadis Varoufakis after the Greece, the Yadis Varoufakis after the Greek um crisis. I mean, the European movement that it started is is is not going anywhere. But they have also started what they call a progressive international. They're very good people. They're young people, they're young people. Um not not hindered, not obstacled by uh 1989. I mean, they have a new vision of what the left-wing movement can do. They're very small, but they they do organize um now and then good events, and they're growing. Um there are some good people with it like the the former president of Ecuador, Correa, and other people I I now cannot cannot find the direct names. But these are movements that can that can start something. In Europe, we we do not have many, many.
SPEAKER_00I actually think that each of the atomized movements, right, could break out of that and start something. I think there's a lot of different places that it could arise, you know, that it could begin to develop. And if that shakes people out of cynicism, you know, actually, I think it will move very fast once that happens. But uh, you know, it's like there's this obstacle. There's this, you know, there's this barrier between growing quickly on the other side of it and being sort of amorphous and not that effectual on our side of it, uh or side of the barrier. Um at any rate, well, is there something that you'd like to bring up or talk about that you know I haven't asked you and you you you you wanna you want to address?
A Direct Call To Unite
SPEAKER_04No, I I mean I think the main message uh should be a call to all people on the left to please work together, listen to each other, try to understand each other, try to have the same meanings for the same words, and work at the local level to convince people and try to build something from there. That's the only thing we can do, because there are solutions, but we do need a new narrative for the left. We do need new definitions of what we can achieve and should achieve, because time is running and and um there is a real crisis, I think. People already know it.
SPEAKER_00I think there's a time waits for no one is uh Rolling Stone song. And it it doesn't uh doesn't slow up, give us more time.
SPEAKER_02Uh huh.
SPEAKER_00All right. Well, um, I thank you for uh being on. And until next time, this is Mike Albert signing off for Revolution Day. Right.