Archive for the ‘Socialism’ Category

Tracing the Hidden History: Unearthing the Past of Socialist Movement in Turkey – Armenian News by MassisPost

Kadir Akin, with his second book, paves the way for Turkish socialists to pursue their common history with Armenians faithfully and intersectionally, to offer a perspective on what has been left out of history of socialists on the lands they live today.

BY CIHAN ERDALBianet.org

Paul Ricoeur, in Memory, History, Forgetting (2004)*, argues that no such thing as a historical reality exists readymade, so that science merely has to reproduce it faithfully. The historical reality, because it is human, is ambiguous and inexhaustible (p. 334).

In his book Sakli Tarihin Izinde: Osmanlida Modernlesme, Anayasa, Sosyalizmin Kkleri ve Ermeni Vekiller (Tracing the Hidden History: Modernization, Constitution, the Roots of Socialism and Armenian Deputies in the Ottoman Empire), Kadir Akin traces the history of the socialist movement led by Armenian intellectuals and deputies as the members of the Chamber of Deputies of the Ottoman Empire during the Second Constitutional Monarchy (1908-1915) not as an academic-historian but as a socialist-intellectual and engaged-researcher.

As a researcher who is committed to contributing to a more faithful relationship with the historical reality of Turkey, Akin attends to challenge both the nationalistic/right-wing and alternative/left-wing accounts of the past, by shedding light on the pivotal roles of Armenian, Greek, Jewish, and Bulgarian revolutionaries in the emergence of socialist politics in the late Ottoman era. In his preface to the book, Ertugrul Krk, the current Honorary President of the Peoples Democratic Party (HDP), aptly describes Akins endeavour as the following:

Rather than doing historiography, he wants to contribute to the restoration of the wounded (historical) consciousness of the Left by calling on historians and historiography to help. Sakli Tarihin Izinde invites the socialist movement with all its fractions, the Left, libertarian and critical citizens to re-approach the state, nation, republic, democracy and socialism in the context of the Armenian Genocide (p. 17-18).

Akins first book Armenian Revolutionary Paramaz, which was published in April 2015 (Dipnot Yayinlari), should also be regarded as an invitation to the Turkish Left to recall the struggle of Armenian socialist Paramaz (Matdeos Sarkisyan), who was one of the leading militants of the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party (SDHP).

The assassination of Hrant Dink marked a milestone for reckoning with the past evils of our country, particularly for our generation in Turkey who engaged in politics throughout the 2000s. The unforgettable chain of conscience and minds of the country, following our great loss, unsettled the dominant, hostile imaginaries of Armenians, who had been taught to us over decades as being giaours, nationalist separatists, traitors, or spies by the Kemalist historiography.

Particularly striking is that the discursive-imaginary orientation of the Turkish Left towards its past has never been fully free of such dominant-nationalist modes of approaching history. The narrative of the past struggles of socialists in Turkey in the 20th century has predominantly built on the heroic stories of some prominent political figures, who suffered from execution, exile, imprisonment, or torture.

However, until the time Akins book was published in 2015, very few of the socialists, leftists, and democrats in Turkey knew the name of the Armenian Revolutionary Paramaz, who was, after an unlawful trial that lasted for 17 days, executed with 19 other comrades in Beyazit Square in 1915.

Such shameful disregard and silence, indeed, was not accidental, given the fact that the hegemonic discourse in the Left used to see no harm in starting its historical trajectory with the foundation of the Turkish Communist Party in 1920 and the significant role of its founder Mustafa Suphi.

Kadir Akin unearths the truth that the Turkish socialists embodied the chauvinist perspective for so long, which historically categorized the political Armenian groups as the ones who were in cahoots with the imperialists.

In an interview with Akin (Sert, 2021)***, the writer describes how excited he was when he first read Paramazs defense at the Van Court while he was on trial in 1897, and highlights Paramazs internationalist political perspective:

Our demand is to live on equal terms with Armenians, Turks, Kurds, Greeks, Alevis, Laz, Yazidis, Syriacs, Arabs and Copts. As a revolutionary, I believe we will achieve this goal. () We are not nationalists, we are not guided by the nation-building motivation. We are friends of the people, not chauvinistic nationalists. We know that a nationalist rule will maintain the same order. Our demand is that all inhabitants of Armenia, Armenians, Kurds, Turks, Arabs, Laz, Circassians, Assyrians, Yazidis and Mitrib elect their own rulers by their own will and vote. We demand this future for all inhabitants of Armenia, for all Ottoman peoples.

Uncovering a forgotten pastKadir Akin, with his second book Sakli Tarihin Izinde, paves the way for Turkish socialists to pursue their common history with Armenians faithfully and intersectionally, to offer a perspective on what has been left out of history of socialists on the lands they live today.

Akin makes it clear that there is more scholarly, political, and ethical effort needed in encountering the struggles of Armenian, Greek, Jewish, and Bulgarian socialists in the late Ottoman era, which has faded into oblivion over decades and has not yet been recognized adequately.

While uncovering this forgotten past, Akin meticulously provides a broader narrative in the book for readers to comprehend the historical conditions in which those Armenian intellectuals-deputies fought for their revolutionary ideas. This includes the poverty brought by the economic destruction during the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid, the 1908 Workers Strikes, how the demands of the Christian peoples of the Ottoman were suppressed under the Islamist policies of Abdulhamid, the relations between the Unionists and Armenian politicians who opposed the tyranny, the conflicts between the Armenian Parties (EDF and SDHP) and the initiatives of their coalition-building, and importantly, how the path to the Armenian genocide has been developed.

What makes Akins contribution unique is that it redeems the past struggles of Armenian deputiesincluding Krikor Zohrab, Hampartzum Boyaciyan, Vartkes Seranglyan, Vahan Papazyan, and Dimitar Wlahof who served in the General Assembly of the Ottoman Empire (1908-1915) as the leading actors of a movement for socialism, equality, and freedom for all peoples of Ottoman.

How many of us had knowledge about their existence and struggles? How many of us knew about Vahan Papazyan speaking out on the education policies (May 8, 1911), Vartkes Serenglyan defending the labor rights against capitalist class, or the historic speech of Hampartzum Boyaciyan on workers fraternity (May 13, 1909) in the Chamber of Deputies?

Kadir Akin illustrates how Armenian deputies believed in the internationalist fight for the workers fraternity, womens rights, freedom of the press, and socialism, which would break down prejudices between and unite all the people of the Ottoman.

Sakli Tarihin Izinde offers a proposal to reimagine the unforgotten past, the past-present relations, and the future of internationalist-socialist struggle in Turkey. Re-approaching the history of socialist movement alongside the truth which Kadir Akin enables us to recognize, journeying to the path for a multicultural, democratic, and equal society becomes more possible.

Recalling the radical history does not only transform our collective memory, but also expands the capability for building a different country and world ahead.

* Ricoeur, Paul (2004) Memory, History, Forgetting. Translated by Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London.

** Akin, Kadir (July 2021) Sakli Tarihin Izinde: Osmanlida Modernlesme, Anayasa, Sosyalizmin Kkleri ve Ermeni Vekiller. Dipnot Yayinlari

** Sert, Soner (2021, August 26). Kadir Akin: Sosyalist hareket tarih bilincinden yoksun durumda, Gazete Duvar. https://www.gazeteduvar.com.tr/kadir-akin-sosyalist-hareket-tarih-bilincinden-yoksun-durumda-haber-1532607

About Cihan ErdalCihan Erdal is a doctoral researcher in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University in Canada. His research interests include social movements, activist youth cultures, contemporary experiences of time and temporalities, memory studies, neoliberalism, intersectionality, citizenship and social policy.

Read more from the original source:
Tracing the Hidden History: Unearthing the Past of Socialist Movement in Turkey - Armenian News by MassisPost

Socialist Jose Cortes obtains ballot access and full voter guide… – Liberation

Jose Cortes, a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, will officially be on the ballot with a full voter guide statement on June 7. Cortes, who grew up in El Cajon, is running on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket in Californias new 51st Congressional District race for U.S. House of Representatives.

At a campaign fundraiser celebration on March 10, Cortes announced to over 40 supporters at Next Door Craft Beer & Wine Bar that the initial campaign efforts were a success. Cortes said, Thank you for coming out and supporting a grassroots, revolutionary campaign here where they feel the safest. Here in this political system that they tell us it is so democratic, but we see with our own eyes is meant to keep people like us out.

By collecting hundreds of signatures and raising over $6,000, Cortes was able to submit a 250-word statement that will go out to hundreds of thousands of voters throughout San Diego County. The full statement is published below.

I am running to represent the interests of the working class, and dedicate my platform to building real power in our communities to create lasting systemic change. I am Chicano and a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. I have organized with the PSL since 2017 after participating in anti-racist protests in El Cajon.

Since then, I have participated in and led actions against police brutality and war. I helped organize a successful campaign to overturn a local ban on feeding homeless people.

I am running on a campaign platform that includes addressing the housing crisis by canceling rent and mortgage debt accumulated throughout the pandemic, passing Medicare for All, constitutionally guaranteeing universal healthcare and housing, eliminating private health insurance, disbanding NATO, bringing home all of the troops for humanitarian and environmental reasons, jailing killer cops, defunding and demilitarizing the police, paying reparations to Black people and Native Americans, guaranteeing full rights for all immigrants, and canceling student debt. The PSL has a plan to actually defeat COVID-19 using the money billionaires have stolen from us workers.

I encourage supporters and voters to get involved with the struggle for a better world by contacting the San Diego branches of the PSL and the Peace and Freedom Party. This campaign is about building community power, and that cannot be done without working-class organization and struggle. A better world is possible, but we have to fight for it!

You can donate or sign up to volunteer for the campaign on the official website.

Continued here:
Socialist Jose Cortes obtains ballot access and full voter guide... - Liberation

Sri Lankan SEP/IYSSE holds well attended online meeting against US-NATO war drive and the Russian invasion of Ukraine – WSWS

The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) in Sri Lanka held a lively online meeting Sunday, March 20, titled Oppose USNATO war drive and the Russian invasion of Ukraine!

Prior to the meeting, the SEP and the IYSSE launched a strong campaign against the imperialist war drive, which attracted wide support among workers, students and youth.

About 150 out of more than 250 registrants joined the meeting, which was held through Zoom, and dozens more watched the event on the partys Facebook page. Participants attended from across Sri Lanka as well as from India, France, the Middle East and several other countries and regions throughout the world. The video has so far been viewed by more than 1,200 people, with 300 others sharing it.

SEP political committee member Saman Gunadasa chaired the meeting. He pointed out that a full-scale war against Russia is being prepared through a media propaganda campaign. As a part of the anti-Russia campaign, he said, the pro-imperialist media is covering up the fact that the US military has killed millions of people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and many other countries in the Middle East and other regions.

Gunadasa emphasized that it was crucial for workers in Sri Lanka, South Asia and throughout the world to understand that there is no future for the working class or the planet itself without building an anti-war movement of the international working class, based on the perspective on international socialism.

David North, the chairman of the International Editorial Board of the WSWS and the national chairman of the SEP in the US, made opening remarks to the meeting. He started by emphasizing that the International Committee of the Fourth Internationals approach to the war is based on revolutionary, socialist and internationalist principles.

While stating that the ICFI has unequivocally opposed the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, North emphasized that it was necessary to expose the deceit and the falsifications of the imperialist powers in their hypocritical anti-Russian campaign.

North explained that thirty years ago, at the time of the dissolution of Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy, the ideologists of the ruling class proclaimed the end of history. The dissolution of the USSR supposedly represented the triumph of capitalism that would bring with it a blossoming of democracy, equality and prosperity.

The breakup of the Soviet Union did not produce prosperity for the masses, North said. It produced poverty. Different fragments of the former Soviet Union are ruled by oligarchic, corrupt governments, and the republics that were established on that basis have been plagued by war.

The entire capitalist world, North said, is confronted with a crisis of monumental proportions. One cannot understand the crisis that has erupted in Ukraine without reference to the global crisis out of which it has emerged. This finds its most extreme expression in a global pandemic that has cost the lives over six million people during the last two years. The US, the most advanced capitalist country in the world, is at the verge of reaching one million deaths.

North said that those deaths could have been avoided, but the necessary measures to stop the pandemic were rejected for two reasons. First the necessary measures conflicted with corporate financial interests, and second the elimination of the virus is not possible on a national basis.

North insisted that the pandemic has revealed an extraordinary indifference to human life on the part of the ruling class. This must be taken as a warning under conditions of the looming threat of a nuclear war. One cannot avoid drawing the conclusion that there is a definite relation between the reactionary policies in response to the pandemic and the reckless policies pursued in response to the war in Ukraine.

Concluding his speech, North said the fundamental and decisive question is: How will this mad drive towards war be stopped? The only way, he said, is through the development of the international class struggle the building of a world party of socialist revolution. He concluded by saying that he hoped the meeting will contribute significantly towards building a powerful international movement of the working class against war and for socialism.

Sakuntha Hirimuthugoda, representing the IYSSE in Sri Lanka, addressed the meeting next. He started his speech by referring to the World Socialist Web Site s analysis of the efforts of the White House to escalate the conflict in Ukraine into a proxy war between the NATO powers and Russia. As a result, the danger of a third world war is mounting. The imperialist powers around the world are sitting on the rim of the volcano of World War III, and they are throwing explosives into it.

Quoting from ICFI statement, Socialism and the Fight Against War, he said that the ruling classes everywhere are impelled to defend their positions by extracting unending sacrifice from workers in their home national state, in the form of mass unemployment, austerity and the destruction of living standards.

Hirimuthugoda added that the ruling elites throughout the world are only capable of leading mankind toward destruction, in the form of war, austerity, dictatorship, fascism, the pandemic and mass unemployment. This can only be stopped by mobilizing the youth and the rest of the oppressed behind an independent working class movement fighting for socialism.

Concluding remarks were delivered to the meeting by SEP political committee member Pani Wijesiriwardena. He said: The deep-rooted and fundamental causes for a war are not revealed in how it begins. They emerge in the course of the wars development. When World War I broke out in 1914, only the most far-sighted MarxistsLenin, Trotsky and Luxemburg, in particularsaw the explosion of the long-escalating inter-imperialist conflict as its root cause.

Referring to the WSWS perspective titled, The war in Ukraine: The questions that must be asked , the speaker continued: The ruling elites in the US and Europe are facing a major economic, political and social crisis, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the ruling class is not capable of providing any solution to the growing social anger, war is being used to divert internal social tensions to an outside enemy.

Wijesiriwardena explained the reactionary role of pseudo-left organizations around the world within this context. He mentioned a statement issued by a Pabloite organization, which claims to be the Executive Bureau of the Fourth International, that supports the vicious anti-Russia campaign. Its Sri Lankan affiliate, the Socialist Peoples Forum, had said that Russia had violated the self-determination of Ukraine while covering up for the role of NATO and American imperialism in instigating the war.

The speaker noted that the US war drive has intensified the geopolitical tensions in the Indian Ocean region and in Asia. He described the disastrous implications of the US conflict with China, which is taking the form of demands that China distance itself from Russia. Although New Delhi has tried to maintain a balance between its military-strategic partnership with the US and its long-standing relationship with Moscow, it is getting difficult to continue that due to the mounting pressure from the Biden administration. The Colombo government has claimed to be neutral in this crisis, but it is under intense US pressure to align with its interests and distance itself from China.

In the conclusion Wijesiriwardena said: Although the capitalist governments have no program to end this devastation, the working class around the world is opposed to the war. What needs to be done is to develop their opposition as a conscious political movement for socialism.

Foreword to the German edition of David Norths Quarter Century of War

Johannes Stern, 5 October 2020

After three decades of US-led wars, the outbreak of a third world war, which would be fought with nuclear weapons, is an imminent and concrete danger.

More:
Sri Lankan SEP/IYSSE holds well attended online meeting against US-NATO war drive and the Russian invasion of Ukraine - WSWS

War in Ukraine: Workers’ voices behind the lines – Socialist Party

Clare Doyle, of the Committee for a Workers International (CWI the socialist international organisation to which the Socialist Party is affiliated) spoke to socialists and worker activists in Ukraine and Kazakhstan on 25 March about the devastating impact of war, not only on lives and infrastructure, but also its political effects on the workers movement.

Half of Ukraines capital city, Kyiv, is now wrecked by shelling and bombing from Russian forces. I spoke to V a trade union and political activist from that city. He has succeeded in taking his wife and son from the crowded school basement they shared with no less than 300 people. Now they have one room in a hut of a Pioneer youth camp in the North-West of Ukraine.

A number of organisations have been banned, broken up, he tells me. But they are mostly pro-Russian groups. Trade unionists and political people have not been able to form separate units.

We have never been able to officially form a party. You had to have ten thousand signatures to do that! We had about 1,200 at one stage in our union.

As a war-time necessity, all our TV news channels have been amalgamated into one. We do get news and videos through social media of one sort or another, including cartoon films for the children.

We discussed the prospects for the war. V commented that Ukraines president Zelensky had clearly dropped the aim of joining Nato, the Western military alliance. There would be a compromise, but it was obviously not clear what and when. Already 800,000 refugees have left Luhansk which, along with Donbas, is one of the hotly disputed regions between the regimes of Russia and Ukraine.

The Russian army is reported to have lost at least 15,000 fighters on the battlefield. Conscription is for two years in Russia. Of course, there will be great distress when the young men fail to return home.

Support for Putin in Russia remains high with all the state-controlled media propaganda about fascists and Nazis ruling Ukraine. The Russian-led USSR lost 20 million people in World War Two following the Nazi invasion, and therefore invoking the spectre of Nazism undoubtedly affects public consciousness.

There are Azovtsi and Banderovtsi (far-right groups) in the Ukrainian army, but the majority of Ukrainians see Russians as family. You have the military horror and the deep shock and disappointment.

V and I spoke about the defection from Russia last week of Anatoly Chubais chief architect of the rapid transition to market capitalist relations in the early 1990s. We also spoke about the area in southern Ukraine where the revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky spent his childhood and student days now coming under bombardment.

Odesa, in the sights of Putins forces, is an historic and beautiful city. It is the scene more than a century ago of a major battle and mutiny in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 a defeat that led to revolt and revolution in Tsarist Russia.

Andrei in Astana, the largest city in Kazakhstan, speaks of a major fuel shortage developing because of a broken pipeline.

But the authoritarian Tokayev government is not likely to put up the price of fuel, given what happened last time he tried in January this year when a mass uprising followed a doubling of LNG supplies at the pumps!

Nor is the shaky dictatorship likely to accede to any demand from Putin to supply young men from Kazakhstan for his war in Ukrainian as pay-back for Russias military assistance in January to quell the uprising.

Andrei speaks of Communists in the Russian Duma (parliament) and in the Moscow City Duma urging Russian forces be sent to retake Kazakhstan! and bring it back within the borders of the old USSR (now defunct for over 30 years). This is by no means aimed at re-establishing a workers state of any kind!, says Andrei.

The party of veteran communist, Gennady Zyuganov has been a loyal collaborator throughout the process of establishing dictatorial, oligarchic capitalism in what was long ago a totally voluntary federation of soviet socialist republics.

The president of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, is torn over relations with Russia, explains Andrei. He lived in Russia a long time and was part of the clique of gangsters at the top. His broader family and his wealth are in Russia. They are all robbers at the top of society, but thieves fall out!

Tokayev seems very uncertain about the future fearful of any new upsurge that could push him aside. His government seems wary of the growth of independent trade unionism and the possible establishment of a workers party especially if it has socialism as its aim.

The bosses are incompetent, the state-controlled trade unions cover up for them and the government looks to us for advice! There are plenty of spontaneous walk-outs taking place and some substantial strikes, says Andrei.

The cessation of the ghastly war in Ukraine, when it comes, will open up a period of turmoil, of reappraisal and of workers struggling to build strong, independent unions and socialist parties in Ukraine, in Kazakhstan, and in Russia itself.

More here:
War in Ukraine: Workers' voices behind the lines - Socialist Party

Invisibilities, Visibilities, and Liberation – International Viewpoint

For quite a period now International Trans Visibility Day has felt, for the trans community at large, increasingly hollow. First conceived by Michigan transgender activist Rachel Crandall in 2009, at that time it aimed to counterbalance the mourning of Transgender Day of Remembrance by celebrating the lives and accomplishments of trans people. It was also a response to the sidelining of transgender people in the broader LGBT community. Subsequently, Joe Biden gave the stamp of US government approval to it, the culmination of making liberal trans rights a centerpiece of his presidential election campaign. (Although he has done little to nothing for trans Americans subsequently, having put them in the crosshairs of GOP reactionary opportunists.)

The situation in 2022 is substantively different to what it was in 2009. Trans liberation (and the securing of access to vital healthcare, legal recognition and community protection from transphobic violence) has stalled throughout most of the world not because trans people are relegated to the extreme margins, but because we have become a fetishistic object for cis fears about societal collapse. The British media now engages politicians to speculate about trans womens genitalia with the likes of Wes Streeting former Head of Education at Stonewall and current Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care proudly proclaiming that women cannot have a penis. (This foreshadows what trans people can expect even were a Labour government in the offing.)

The Gender Critical movement in the UK, borrowing transphobic ideas from currents of radical feminism as well as conservative Catholic reactionaries, coalesced around Theresa Mays planned reform to the Gender Recognition Act to grant improved access to Gender Recognition Certificates, humanizing and demedicalising the process. (Although likely retaining significant and brutal checks, and completely excluding nonbinary people.) These minor changes with no consequences for cis people, were cynically conflated with long existing rights enshrined in the Equality Act that protects trans people from discrimination and gives them access to gender specific spaces congruent with their gender identities.

This has given rise to a phoney debate about single-sex spaces, amounting to a fascist wedge against the oppressed, bolstered by false claims to represent cis womens and LGB anxieties with no evidentiary polling basis. Politicians and journalists now glibly speculate about trans womens genitals and misrepresent language intended to include trans men as a concession to trans womens delusionsor, in the pretentious language of noted transphobic academic Kathleen Stock, immersive fictions. In this context the relative invisibility of trans men is deeply interwoven in the weaponised hyper-visibility of trans women and transfeminine people.

Meanwhile, transphobic hate crimes have quadrupled during a pandemic that already renders queer people especially vulnerable, often bereft of vital familial support needed to traverse this social catastrophe. Denied services, publicly attacked and maligned, discriminated against in work, all LGBQIA+ people near disaster as the cost-of-living crisis again impacts us doubly: first, as generally more financially precarious, and second, as scapegoats for inevitable mass discontent.

The kind of visibility trans people have received, then, is harmful. But a deeper invisibility, the one to which Crandall was responding, remains in place. Our humanity remains tragically invisible. We are the subject of a debate, material for clickbait throughout the press from the BBC and Guardian to the Times and Telegraph. Every major party (the Labour Party, the Conservative Party, the Green Party, the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish Nationalist Party) has been embroiled in transphobia, with the Tories easily being worst and the SNP performing better, but nobody coming out well. In all of this, our lives and struggles and complexities are rendered null.

Before Streeting sat opposite arch-reactionary and transphobe Julia Hartley-Brewer to deny trans humanity, he congratulated a conservative MP for coming out as trans and discussing gender dysphoria. The disconnect here is exemplary. Real human beings are not seen at all in this culture war, we are mill for the grist. The selfsame person can express compassion for us one moment, and contribute to our demonization an entire fifteen minutes later! The cognitive dissonance sees that trans issues are separated from real trans people, as interlocuters on all sides (but rarely trans people themselves) are given immense platforms to discuss us as an abstracted problem.

Instead of visibility, trans people want support. The living solidarity needed to secure healthcare and to be allowed about society without constant harassment or worse. We need a Trans Day of Action. Not merely our own, because we cannot win this fight alone. Trans people routinely donate to one anothers Go Fund Me pages to raise enough to seek private treatment for dysphoria; we regularly create online spaces, on an internet utterly hostile to us, to nurture our shared trans consciousness and allow one another to flourish; we often attend protest after protest to demand liberation from the systems of domination that renders our existences living hell.

We need cis people to commit to taking some of this burden in the coming years. We need more unions to care enough to show up to our protests (during a recent trans pride, many unions opted to attend another generalised left protest that had no demands, no unified message and no reason to exist whatsoever). We need the prejudice of transphobia to be addressed in all liberatory organisations and called out in workplaces, education, political parties and everywhere else.

After these conditions are met, we will be enabled to be visible in all of our diverse humanity, not only as trans men, trans women, and nonbinary people, but as human beings. But until the particularities of our social condition are thereby addressed, our general place in a universal humanity, and therefore humanity as such, is impossible. This diminishes not only us, but everyone. It also creates an example of reactionary triumph that inevitably jeopardizes the wider unity of the exploited and the oppressed, and therefore the entire socialist project.

Solidarity is a means and an end for socialism, every part of our humanity that comes under sustained assault draws in ever more of our humanity to resist, and to transform defensive struggles into a fight for our full emancipation in the abolition of the social forces of class society that deny us freedom. In this struggle, to give ground at all, to fail to defend the smallest group, is to encourage inhumanity to its final victory, what Marx insightfully called the common ruin of the contending classes. Solidarity is the only alternative.

Source: Anti*Capitalist Resistance.

Original post:
Invisibilities, Visibilities, and Liberation - International Viewpoint