Andy Warhol rendition of Mao

CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities–an organization dedicating to building power for working class Asians in NYC–has been engaging in “politicking” discussions since the beginning of 2011.  Our recent topic has been China, focusing on the conditions today and what it means in the global economy.  We decided to read Wang Hui’s The End of the Revolution to get a better sense of neoliberalism in China today.  It’s a tough read, but well worth it.  I wrote out a summary to help us along in our reading and wanted to share it….

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Summary of Wang Hui’s The End of the Revolution

Chapter 2 – “The Year 1989 and the Historical Roots of Neoliberalism in China”

Alexander Day’s review of Wang’s book called “Depoliticization and the Chinese Intellectual Scene” describes liberal conceptualizations of China, which maintains an opposition between the socialist state on one side, and both the free market and “civil society” on the other.  Similarly, Day describes the post-Mao intellectual scene in China that viewed the socialist state as linked to an “authoritarian feudal tradition based on a conservative peasant mentality.  Breaking with tradition meant converging with west.”  Hence, liberating society from the state also meant enabling the flow of free markets.  The entire book seeks to break with these oppositions and show the collusion between free market neoliberalism and state authoritarianism.

In this chapter, Wang makes three arguments:

1) Neoliberalism’s connections to the state:

Countering conceptions of neoliberalism that views the authoritarian state in opposition with free markets, Wang describes mutual dependence between neoliberalism and state practice (pg. 32).  He argues that neoliberalism relies on “its extrapolitical and anti-state character is thus utterly dependent upon its inherent links to the state.” (pg. 19)  The masked relationship between the free market and the state is a key contradictory relationship of neoliberalism.

In summary, while neoliberalism is cast as “extrapolitical and anti-state” (think Republicans arguing for lower taxes and saying that the state interferes with the free market), neoliberalism is actually intimately connected to the state.

2) Uncovering neoliberal ideologies

Wang argues that neoliberalism is an ideology.  As an ideology, neoliberalism has depoliticized the masses (a key point in the previous chapter which was not assigned), which enables the state to consolidate its power and further advance its free market objectives.  By depoliticizing people, it also conceals its own contradictions (pg. 20), for example, neoliberals rarely consider the massive wealth inequalities caused by this ideology.  The essay aims to uncover the workings of neoliberalism in China today by analyzing its historical conditions in order to understand both its origins and effects.

3) Understanding the historical context of 1989

The major starting point for neoliberalism in China was the 1989 democracy movement, but Wang argues that this was not the intention of protesters who participated from many sectors of society.  Wang recollects his own experiences in the democracy movement: “1989 was for me significant in many ways: it was a farewell to the old era as well as a protest against the internal social contradictions of the new era; it was (for students and intellectuals) a cry for democracy and freedom; and it was (for workers and other urbanites) a kind of plea for social equality and justice.” (pg. 33)

Wang continues: “However, the dominant analysis of the 1989 social movement in the world was one most advantageous to those special interests advocating radical privatization.”  Meaning, the capitalists took advantage of the movement and used it to their advantage.  This occurred in the context of a crisis in legitimacy of the Chinese state due to both an economic crisis and state violence (pg. 33).  Additionally, the students and intellectuals who sparked the movement lacked an understanding of these historical conditions and were unable to overcome the ideological framework of the Cold War, which equates socialism with state authoritarianism.

He goes into some detail describing the rural and urban reforms that preceded the 1989 movements.  The 1978 to 1984 rural reform phase was fairly successful, with an emphasis on redistributing rural land, developing rural industries, and increasing rural consumption, which decreased the wealth gap between rural and urban residents (pg. 23).

The urban reform phase of 1984 onward was less successful in this respect, as it introduced market mechanisms, decreased public spending (pg. 24), and reorganized state-owned enterprises, decreasing benefits and thereby increasing inequality (pg. 25).  Wang argues that 1989 was an urban social movement responding to the expansion of the market and increasing inequality (pg 28, 30).

He argues that the “transition” marked by the 1989 movement helps us better understand “structural transformations in power within China and globally.” (pg 20) Special interests (meaning capitalists) took advantage of the democracy movement and divisions within the state that it enhanced, and used the movement as a platform help carry out privatization reforms (pg. 31).  Also, China had already abandoned its alignment with the Soviet Union, and in 1978 separated from the Third World and non-aligned movement.  During the Vietnam War, which started in 1979, China found itself squarely on the side of the U.S. in their shared opposition to the Soviet Union (pg. 42-43).

In summary, the historical conditions for neoliberalism had already been established prior to the 1989 democracy movement that demanded democracy and freedom while protesting growing social inequality.  However, special interests took advantage of the moment and used it as a platform to advance privatization and market reforms.

Questions for discussion:

1. How does Wang Hui perceive the state?
2. What are Wang Hui’s views of China today, especially of the communist party?  How does he perceive capitalism?
3. How has neoliberalism affected the Chinese countryside?
4. How does this historical analysis help us understand the political backgrounds and social understandings of working class Asians in the U.S. today?
5. Questions from page xxxii: what is the mass line and conceptions of popular democracy of the new era?  How do we overcome depoliticization created through neoliberalism?  Are these understandings different in the China and the U.S. context?

Ok, this is wayyy too long.  But I decided to spend my spring break summarizing two chapters of Wretched of the Earth!  I made it for my students, and hope it can helpful to others too so I don’t feel like an utter hopeless nerd spending my entire vacation in the library…..

Frantz Fanon ~ Wretched of the Earth

First Published in French in 1961; Grove Press Edition translated by Richard Philcox, 2004

Historical significance of text:

Fanon recited this text to his wife as he died from leukemia in 1959 in the midst of the Algerian war, in which Algeria was fighting for independence from France.  Fanon was a psychiatrist in Algeria, and supporter of the FLN (Front de Liberation Nationale), a socialist party fighting for liberation.  The last chapter of Wretched of the Earth, “Colonial War and Mental Disorders,” describes Fanon’s experiences as a psychiatrist in war-torn Algeria, in which he discusses, in harrowing detail, the psychological impacts of war on his patients, which included civilians, Algerian liberation fighters, and European police officers.

This book must be read in the context of the extreme violence of the decolonization struggles in which Fanon participated in Algeria.  While rooted in this time and place, the text is also universal in scope, drawing on the different levels of human experience—the social, political, economic, and psychological.  A humanist, his ultimate objective is to “endeavor to invent a man in full, something which Europe has been incapable of achieving.”  (p. 236)

Cultural theorist Stuart Hall has remarked that Wretched of the Earth is the “bible of decolonization.”  Considered to be a canonical book in black liberation and decolonization struggles, it has inspired the Black Panther Party and revolutionary leaders such as Malcolm X and Che Guevara.  In Obama’s autobiography, Dreams From My Father, Obama mentions that he discussed Fanon at night in the dorms with his politically inclined classmates.

A descendant of African slaves, Fanon grew up in Martinique in the Caribbean, and his family belonged to the middle-class by the standards of the island.  Five of his parents’ eight children, including Fanon, went to France for higher education.  Throughout Wretched of the Earth, Fanon refers to himself as a “colonized intellectual,” an identity derived from existing in two worlds.  While he has the privileges accorded to people with a university education, he identifies with the oppressed as a black person in a colonized world.

Chapter 1, “On Violence” (pages 1-21)

Summary: The premise of this chapter is that the colonial world is divided into two separate halves: on one side there are the European colonizers and on the other are the “wretched of the earth”—the African colonized people.  Their relationship with each other is defined by a logic of violence and counterviolence .

The military barracks and the police stations make up the dividing line between these two halves, with the police and military officers serving as spokespersons for the “regime of oppression.” (p. 3)   The individuals and institutions of the colonial regime structure the power relations that shape the dynamic between the oppressors and the oppressed—a dynamic steeped in violence.

Race plays a determining feature in colonial society.  Fanon states that “what divides the world is first and foremost what species, what race one belongs to.” (p. 5)  The Marxist analysis that he speaks to on page 5 is the idea that economic systems comprise the “base” of society, which thereby influences the “superstructure” of a society which includes social relations, culture, laws, and the state.  By this Marxist analysis, capitalism and economic inequality give shape to racism.  Fanon argues that this analysis must be “stretched” in the colonial situation because race also gives form to economic systems due to European control of wealth and resources, a fact that structures the colonial world.

In this chapter, Fanon is primarily interested in how the defeat of colonialism can be achieved.  (p. 13)   He claims that the pursuit of truth can help advance independence because colonialism is predicated on lies (p. 14) [Throughout this text and in his first book, Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon describes how black people mistakenly identify with white colonizers—in fact, they see themselves as white].

Most importantly, though, he argues that the defeat of colonialism can only be achieved through violence.  In a “world configured by the colonizer,” the colonial world is “hostile, oppressive and aggressive,… bulldozing the colonized masses” (p. 16) and therefore the “emergence of the armed struggle against colonialism” is “inevitable.” (p. 17)  He discusses for a few pages how religious feuds between Algerians (which he describes as “fratricidal bloodbaths”  p. 17) and pagan spiritual practices offer a temporary escape from the grim reality of colonialism (p. 17-20), but ultimately, colonial violence must be addressed  through praxis and violence (p. 21).

By praxis, he means the generative process between theory and practice, in which practice is informed by theory and thereby informs the theory itself.  In fact, Fanon states later that violence is the absolute praxis (p. 45), meaning that as a practice, it results from theorization and reflection on the colonial situation.

In theorizing violence throughout the rest of the chapter (which was not assigned), Fanon emphasizes the “atmospheric violence” of colonialism (p. 31) and that colonialism “is naked violence and only gives in when confronted with greater violence.” (p. 23)  In other words, “force is the only solution” in the quest for decolonization (p. 32).  This is his key point, that violence is necessary for the colonized because violence imposed by the colonizers is so pervasive.  The colonized person “liberates himself in and through violence.” (p. 44)  This contradicts his later descriptions of the “circle of hatred” characteristic of the “terror, counterterror, violence, counterviolence” that describes wars for national liberation (p. 47).  Despite this acknowledgement, Fanon argues that violence in the pursuit of liberation is ultimately “positive, formative” (p. 50) “totalizing” and “cleansing.” (p. 51

In the introduction, Homi Bhabha asserts that deep down on a personal level, Fanon loathed violence (conveyed in his last chapter describing his experiences in the psychiatric ward), but he saw it as unavoidable due to the deeply entrenched violence in Algeria at the time.

Question: In a situation such as a war for national liberation against a violent colonizer, is violence necessary?  What about the case Libya and the current revolutions in the Middle East?  What about the case of the Black Panthers, in which members carried guns in “self-defense” against police who have historically targeted black communities?

Some other key points of this chapter:

• The struggle is fundamentally for land—which provides bread, dignity, and freedom from the violence of the colonial regime (p. 9).

• European wealth was literally built on the backs of slaves, and fed itself from the resources of the colonized world.  “Europe’s well-being and progress were built with the sweat and corpses of blacks, Arabs, Indians, and Asians.” (pg. 53) This means that Europe’s wealth depends on the slavery, genocide, and labor of Third World people.  Without it, Europe would not have the status and power it has today
• The central question is a necessary redistribution of wealth (p. 55)
• True national liberation cannot take place under capitalism, as a privileged few will still hold positions of power and control the majority of wealth.  Rather, socialism will benefit the entire nation (p. 55-56)
• Fanon repeats throughout the chapter that decolonization is the process in which the colonized take the place of the colonizer.  What are the shortcomings of this goal? (This is discussed in the next chapter!)

Chapter 3, “The Trials and Tribulations of National Consciousness”

Summary: This chapter deals with Fanon’s recognition that after national independence is achieved, the ruling elites of the colonized nation usually perpetuate the systems of inequality characteristic of the colonial regime by replicating and imitate the systems of the colonizer in order to pursue their narrow interests.  There are three central questions of this chapter:

• What happens after the national bourgeoisie  inherit positions of power after decolonization? The wealthy people of the formerly colonized nation generally seek to advance their own personal interests and do not pursue the collective benefits of the entire nation
• What is the significance of national consciousness? Fanon’s response to this question has been interpreted in many ways, but many today read him as a strong critic of nationalism.  He states in this chapter that nationalism can effectively rally the masses, but alone it is empty, and must quickly be expanded and deepened to a more humanistic social and political consciousness
• What is the role of political education for real liberation? I find this to be the most compelling part of this chapter; he states that the masses will only demand programs for radical transformation when they deepen their understanding of what it means to be human

On “What happens after the national bourgeoisie  inherit positions of power after decolonization?”

Fanon argues that the colonized elite (who he also refers to as the national bourgeoisie) are unprepared to rule the independent nation due to their cowardice, disconnection from the masses, and inability to engage in “popular praxis.” (p. 97-98) [Remember, praxis is theoretical reflection linking to practice.]   Rather than being a “crystallization of the people’s innermost aspirations,” national consciousness becomes “nothing but a crude, empty, fragile shell” (p. 97) it leads to the colonized merely taking the place of the colonizer without fundamentally changing the colonial structure!

Fanon talks about this at great length, arguing that the national bourgeoisie are arrogant and narcissistic, but don’t really have the knowledge and skills to run a country because they have been subservient to the colonizers for so long.  Fanon argues that the national bourgeoisie should learn from the people, and should use the skills and knowledge gained from the colonial universities (in reading, writing, engineering, etc.) to serve the decolonized masses.  However, the decolonized elite often do not fulfill this responsibility and merely identify with their class position and seek to maintain their position through their ownership of land, and status as a professionals  (p. 98-99).   The national bourgeoisie mimics and identifies with the Western bourgeoisie.  They seek to advance capitalism, make money for themselves, manage Western companies, and cater to Westerners by running holiday resorts for Western tourists (p. 100-101).  When the power changes hand after decolonization, the national bourgeoisie just take the jobs previously held by foreigners, resulting in the “nationalization and Africanization of the managerial class.”  (p. 103) However, this does not mark a significant shift in class relations and power structures, as the poor remain poor.  This is because the elites are more concerned with their immediate interests than “building the nation on a solid, constructive foundation.”  (p. 106)

On “What is the significance of national consciousness?”

Fanon argues that after decolonization, nationalism quickly shifts to ultranationalism, chauvinism and racism (p. 103).  At its core, colonialism exploits any sort of difference.  Previously, it was between the Europeans and Africans, but after decolonization, people revert to old tribal and ethnic rivalries that were exacerbated by colonialism.  Ethnic groups turn against each other and territorial divisions become even more important than before because people are fighting for the bread crumbs left over from the colonizers.  Also, the colonizers exploit previously existing divisions to prevent national unity and maintain the oppression of the masses.  On page 107-108, Fanon describes the divisions between the Arabs and Black people in Africa, who were considered respectively “white Africans” and “Black Africans.”  Europeans reinforced the notions that Arabs were civilized while Black Africans were wild and savage, which forestalled the defeat of colonialism.  [In fact, the Algerian war was also a civil war between the FLN and an Arab-led party that was supported by the French.]

National consciousness alone is meaningless because the national bourgeois merely implement a single-party authoritarian system seeking to advance their power.  Interested in the state control of capital for their personal gain, they secure legitimacy through “prestige projects” like building fancy things around the state capital (p. 111). Just like before, the army and police are “pillars of the regime,” but now they are corrupt and manipulated by foreign advisors from the colonial country (p. 117).

On “What is the role of political education for real liberation?”

I find this discussion on political education and consciousness to be the most important passages of this book (see p. 124, 133-144).  While the first chapter, “On Violence,” discusses the necessity of violence for decolonization, these passages argue for the constructive, generative force of education as key liberation after the grim reality of colonial violence has been reckoned with.  As a necessary  response to colonial violence, violence catalyzes a new consciousness that is complete and humanizing, breaking free from the fragmentation of colonialism.

Strategies for political education to build this consciousness include public information campaigns, and meetings amongst the masses that offer a space for people to speak, express themselves, innovate.  In such meetings, the “brain multiplies association of ideas and eyes discover a wider human panorama.” (p. 136)  Amidst this new humanism, people live and work “with one’s brain and one’s heart [more] than with muscles and sweat.” (p. 133)   He condemns language only comprehensible to law and economic graduates that both confuse and convey an unspoken desire of the intellectual to “dispossess.”    (p. 131)

Fanon concludes the chapter by stating that nationalism was useful to rouse the masses against the oppressor, but it falls apart in the aftermath of independence in the absence of a broader social and political consciousness (p. 142).  Nationalism must very quickly be “explained, enriched, and deepened… [then turned] into a social and political consciousness, into humanism” to avoid reaching a dead end.  He describes a “collective consciousness,” “enlightened and coherent praxis,” and “collective forging of a destiny” that is totalizing and complete, that restores human dignity, and that works towards a new, international, liberated human.

i wrote this piece for a Left Forum panel i was on this past weekend called “Identity, Multiculturalism, Solidarity.”  i never actually got to read this speech, and instead we did moderated Q and A the whole time, but i’d really like to share this and hear your feedback.

thanks!

~

When the Wall Street Journal article on Amy Chua’s book The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother started to go viral, and after I got over my initial sympathy for her daughters, cast as ultra “model minorities” who happen to be Chinese Jewish (like myself), I started to ask myself: WHY?  Why is this article getting so much attention, and why now?

A student of mine pointed me to the Jan 31, 2011 cover story of Time Magazine, which offers some telling insights.  Mentioning China’s burgeoning wealth, the article quotes the statement of the Pennsylvania governor after a cancelled football game due to a blizzard.  He says: “We’ve become a nation of wusses.  The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything….In China, people would have marched down to the stadium, doing calculus on their way down.”

These sentiments are reflected by Obama’s recent state of the union address, in which he more subtly states: “[In China and India], they started educating their children earlier and longer, with greater emphasis on math and science. They’re investing in research and new technologies.”  This of course, is his weak explanation for the joblessness and weakening of the U.S. economy.  The Chinese and Indian child math geniuses mask the real reason for the crisis: a predatory corporate capitalism propped up by a state that has disinvested from real human needs, and instead subsidizes military and corporate firms.

So I started to realize that the Tiger Mother allegory is an internalization and absorption of the alien Asian threat through a vilified Chinese motherhood.  As portrayed by Chua, it’s about a clash of civilizations between East and West in which an essentialized, foreign Other threatens the identity of our home country through the private realm of the family.  And instead of the typical white, colonial gaze, this image is refracted through the experiences of a Chinese woman herself, engaged in the upper class American project for her children to maintain their parents’ class status.  Amy Chua represents Yellow Peril domesticated, cloaked in liberal multiculturalism, portrayed by a Chinese woman going to great lengths to portray a “real” version of her people uncut, showing the ugly stuff going on behind closed doors.

Dylan Rodriguez identifies liberal multiculturalism as the “most current and recent innovation of white supremacy that feeds and fosters a desire to live as (we imagine) white people do.”  This can be depicted in the photos accompanying the Chua family in their beautiful New Haven home, sitting around a piano.  Multiculturalism is more about representation of “diverse faces and voices doing white things” and does nothing to challenge the structures of white supremacy.  The neoconservative model minority myth gained visibility in the mid-60s amidst the civil rights and black power movements, portraying Asians as self-disciplined and submissive in comparison to demands for social justice, most visibly being put forth by Black people.  Reinscribing ideas about a black culture of poverty, the model minority provides a contrast that reinforces antiblack racism.  Currently, the neoliberal multiculuralist model minority myth is being used in new ways.  We’re being used to reinforce class aspirations, to mask the reality of racism and poverty still experienced by people of color, and to cast us as an alien threat to distract us from the destructive workings of capitalism—the true cause of the current economic crisis.

Dominant, hegemonic culture wants us to think that poor Asians don’t exist, and ignore the massive divide between rich Asians and working class Asians in the U.S.

This is why the work of CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities in New York City is so important, which is dedicated to building power amongst working class Asians through organizing and building coalitions with other working class people of color.  We organize the Chinatown Tenants Union in Chinatown, fighting landlords against gentrification and helping to lead a coalition working for community input on the development of the East River Waterfront.  We also organize Southeast Asian refugee youth in the Bronx, where the community there is still dealing with the aftershocks of war in Southeast Asia, and high poverty rates resulting from their relocation in the U.S. in the 70s following the wars.

Some of my most meaningful relationships in CAAAV has been made with youth, and I believe that political education is the most effective way to bridge the gap between the work with do in the academy and the organizing we do “on the streets.”

Yes, some of the youth might attend college, while a few join the military, others do restaurant or other low-wage work, while others join the ranks of the unemployed.  Not surprisingly, Time and the Wall Street Journal are not writing about this.

The fundamental contradiction of our work is the following:  How do we educate and nurture the youth in our communities to both challenge capitalism and survive in a neoliberal capitalist world?  What alternatives to capitalism can we build, and what are already available?

I always tell my students, “If we want to change the world, we need to understand racism and talk about it.”  What many think of as “colorblindness” has really taken hold in New York City.  We’re now in the Obama era, and this idea has risen to a whole new level, along with the normalized surveillance characteristic of the War on Terror, the increased violence of our immigration system, and the rising police and military state that especially targets young black and brown men.

So the question is:  How can we understand and teach about the increasingly tricky, contradictory liberal multicultural ideologies that hide these realities?  This is a key part of our project to change the material conditions of our world.  And most importantly, how can we survive and make time to imagine new strategies and alternatives?