신자유주의에 저항하는 전지구적 봉기에 초대된 것을 환영합니다.

https://www.thenation.com/article/global-rebellions-inequality/

Welcome to the Global Rebellion Against Neoliberalism

 

Welcome to the Global Rebellion Against Neoliberalism

As distinct as the protests seem, the uprisings rocking Bolivia, Lebanon, and scores of other countries all share a common theme.

By Ben Ehrenreich

YESTERDAY 9:19 AM

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A supporter of former president Evo Morales holds a Bolivian flag during clashes with police in La Paz, Bolivia, November 13, 2019. (AP / Natacha Pisarenko)

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Something—someone—keeps knocking at the door. It’s cold out there and getting colder, but the people inside are cozy on the sofa with the TV on and a blanket on their laps. But there’s that knock again: at the front door now, then the side door, then the back. Maybe it’s the wind. Now there’s knocking at the windows and the roof and the walls of the house—who knew they were so thin? It’s hard to understand: How could so many people be knocking all at once?

But they are, and it’s getting louder. Last week you could hear the banging in Colombia—in Bogotá, Cali, Cartagena, Barranquilla, Medellín, a curfew declared, the army in the streets—and the week before that in Iran, a steady beat that quickly spread to more than 100 cities. At least 100 protesters have been killed so far. It’s hard to know if there were more, or exactly what is going on: The government shut off the Internet on the protests’ second day. But even when there’s a steady connection, it’s hard to put it all together: Protests have been roiling through Algeria, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, France, Germany, Guinea, Haiti, Honduras, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Spain, Sudan, the UK, and Zimbabwe—I’m sure I’m leaving someplace out—and that’s only since September. Some have been the fleeting, routine sort that snarls up traffic for a day. Others look more like revolutions, big enough to topple governments, shut down entire nations.

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Something is happening here. But what? And why now? In the last 12 weeks, protests have spanned five continents—most of the planet—from wealthy London and Hong Kong to hungry Tegucigalpa and Khartoum. They are so geographically disparate and apparently heterogeneous in cause and composition that I have not yet seen any serious attempt to view them as a unified phenomenon. (I don’t count The New York Times’ determination that the discontent can be traced to “pocketbook issues”—as close to class analysis as the paper of record gets.)

 

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On the face of it, there appears to be little that unites them. In Iran, the announcement of a 50 percent hike in fuel prices set it off. In Germany, the Netherlands, and France, farmers blocked highways to protest environmental regulations. The outrage that has been shaking Hong Kong since June started with proposed legislation that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China. In Chile the spark was a hike in the cost of public transportation, in Indonesia an oppressive crime bill, in Lebanon the announcement of new taxes on everything from gasoline to WhatsApp calls.

Some of these movements have been organized by unions or formal opposition parties, but many are of the horizontal, leaderless sort. (“Be like water,” as the Hong Kong protesters put it, channeling Bruce Lee.) No overarching revolutionary ideology unites them. No vanguard party is rushing to the front. The single left-right axis on which the world was split for most of the last century is no longer always helpful. Right-wingers, and the United States government, have cheered the democratic aspirations of demonstrators in Hong Kong, Iran, and Bolivia—before the coup that toppled Evo Morales anyway—while scorning or ignoring them more or less everywhere else. The more doctrinaire quarters of the left have sniffed imperialist interventionism behind the Hong Kong and Iranian protests while affirming the legitimacy of pretty much every other popular movement on the planet.

If you can squint past the smoke from the barricades, the commonalities start to stand out. In Chile, anger over a  3 percent raise in metro fares revealed a population not merely miffed by “pocketbook issues”—the fare hike pushed transit costs to 21 percent of the monthly salary of a worker earning the minimum wage—but so exhausted by austerity, so squeezed by low wages and long hours and debt, so fed up with the greed and blindness of the wealthy few who run the country that they were ready to burn almost everything down. A few hours after declaring a state of emergency and dispatching the military into the streets, billionaire President Sebastián Piñera went on TV to remind the citizenry that Chile’s “stable democracy” and growing economy make it a “true oasis” on an otherwise chaotic continent. “The practices that underpin prosperity are not popular,” The Economist drily observed.

 

In another corner of the same echo chamber, not long after Egyptian police rounded up thousands who dared to demonstrate in September, the country’s finance minister lamented that the “fruits of [Egypt’s] economic reform were not captured by ordinary people.” Measures imposed by the International Monetary Fund had in fact caused inflation to rise 60 percent over three years, plunging millions into poverty. This is what a Morgan Stanley analyst recently called the “best reform story in the Middle East.”

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The disconnect between elite perception and mass experience is as widespread as it is fundamental: All of the countries recently experiencing popular revolts—and most of the rest of the planet—have for decades been ruled by a single economic model, in which the “growth” celebrated by the pedigreed few means immiseration for the many, and capital streams into American and European accounts as reliably as sewage flows downhill. Chile was a notorious early laboratory: Pinochet’s assassination squads worked in tandem with Chicago-trained economists to create an “economic miracle” that only the fortunate, the unscrupulous, and the blind were able to appreciate. Should popular mobilizations in Bolivia fail to reverse the November 10 coup, they can expect similar acts of god.

The word gets thrown around a lot these days, but this is what neoliberalism means: a globally applicable method for preserving the current overwhelming imbalance of power. It works microcosmically on a municipal level—think decaying public transit systems with an apparently bottomless budget for racist fare enforcement, while billionaires hop in helicopters from rooftop to rooftop—and macrocosmically on a planetary scale, in which national elites collude with multinational corporations and international financial institutions to keep labor cheap and wealth and resources confined into established channels.

For most of the early 2000s, abundant Chinese capital and high prices for commodities like oil, gas, minerals, and agricultural products meant that some poor countries had options. For a little while, they could avoid the draconian “reform” traps attached to IMF loans: the usual slash-and-burn austerity recipe of public-sector cuts, privatization of state-held resources, and the gutting of labor protections in the name of “liberalization.” In Latin America, leftist governments won ground, and poverty and inequality plummeted. But the commodities boom sputtered out, the Chinese economy has stalled, and, after years of what must have been painful soul-searching, the IMF has stepped back in with the same old and discredited solutions.

Local elites have been happy to play along, hacking away at their own populations to keep the money flowing. In March, Ecuadorean President Lenín Moreno signed a deal with the IMF for a $4.2 billion loan, and in October, as required, slashed public sector wages and fuel subsidies, causing the price of diesel to double—and many thousands of mainly indigenous Ecuadoreans to pour into the streets. (Moreno soon fled the capital and agreed to abandon the austerity package.) In Lebanon, Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri announced a raft of new consumer taxes—on fuel, tobacco, and phone calls made via Internet messaging services—as part of a deficit-reduction package required by foreign lenders to secure an $11 billion loan. After 12 days of protests in which as much as a quarter of Lebanon’s population took part, Hariri resigned. The protesters haven’t quit.

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The same model applies even in countries where the IMF and World Bank are forbidden from doing business: Iran, hobbled by four decades of US sanctions, has turned for years to the usual array of austerity measures. If they had widely failed to provide the economic panacea that they promised, they could at least reliably cushion the elite, passing the suffering on to classes deemed expendable. Until they couldn’t, that is.

Dignity is a funny thing: Once you reclaim it, it’s even harder to give up. Protesters’ demands have almost everywhere expanded far beyond the original outrage that set them off. In Hong Kong, demonstrators quickly determined that the withdrawal of the Extradition Bill was not nearly enough: They wanted universal suffrage too. (Half the seats in the city’s Legislative Council are directly elected by “functional constituencies,” such as bankers, manufacturers, and developers; inequality and housing costs are higher than anywhere in the world.) In Chile, protesters’ demands expanded from rolling back transit hikes to scrapping the country’s Pinochet-era Constitution. (It looks like they’ll get both—Piñera has reversed the fare hike and agreed to a referendum for a new Constitution.)

In Lebanon, protesters are now debating whether their movement counts as a revolution. (It should be no surprise that such fierce protests have arisen in Beirut, Hong Kong, and Chile, some of the most heavily privatized places on the planet.) In Sudan, an uprising that started when the government of Omar al-Bashir cut wheat and fuel subsidies—“at the suggestion of international lending partners,” The New York Times politely put it—ended up toppling his 30-year regime, and has not stopped fighting yet. In Haiti too, protests began more than a year ago when President Jovenel Moïse precipitously raised fuel prices to please the IMF. Protesters were soon demanding the US-backed Moïse’s resignation and have been at it ever since.

It is hard not to notice that not only in Haiti but in at least half a dozen countries from Ecuador to Zimbabwe protests were sparked by increases to the price of gasoline. It is no secret that we have to begin weaning ourselves off fossil fuels immediately if we are to have any hope of preserving some bearable version of human life on earth, but although nearly all of these countries have been hurt by the climate crisis—and their most vulnerable citizens hurt the hardest—these fuel hikes were not about reducing emissions. The IMF frequently ties loans to cuts in energy subsidies, and fuel taxes are an easy if regressive way to defray public debt: two tactics for getting the poor, and all those who have not benefited from official corruption, to bail out those who have.

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On the other side of the global divide, wealthy European countries have seen protests directly linked to climate policy—either because governments are doing too little, as in the UK, or because the measures they are taking unevenly distribute the pain, as in the Netherlands and Germany, where farmers have reacted to restrictions on pesticides and nitrogen emissions by blocking highways with thousands of tractors, and France, where an environmentally motivated fuel tax coupled with tax cuts for the rich let loose more than a year of fighting in the streets.

From both sides, the lessons here are very clear. First, that any attempt to tackle the climate crisis that does not also take on the basic needs of the overwhelming majority of the earth’s inhabitants will catastrophically fail. And second, that those basic needs include not just food, health care, and housing, but also dignity and forms of solidarity that the current system does everything it can to destroy.

Is it any wonder that so many uprisings, all at once, barely rate a mention on the TV news? Earlier this month, the novelist Dominique Eddé wrote of the popular uprisings in Lebanon that it is “as if hundreds of thousands of solitary people had discovered at the same time, after an endless hibernation, that they were not alone.” If we would only look, we would see that the same thing is happening all across the globe, people waking up together, looking around, and finding each other looking back.

 

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Ben EhrenreichBen Ehrenreich’s most recent book, The Way to the Spring, is based on his reporting from the West Bank. His next book, Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time, will be published in July by Counterpoint Press.

 

신자유주의에 저항하는 전지구적 봉기에 초대되신 걸 환영합니다.

Ben Ehrenreich

이 글의 결론. "존엄과 연대의 다양한 형식"에 대한 요구, 이를 파괴하는 전지구적 폭력에 대한 저항. 그리고 이를 이해하지 못하는 오래된 좌우파 지식인들의 한계점.

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이 모든 사태의 교훈은 매우 분명하다. 첫째, 압도적으로 많은 지구 주민의 basic need기본적 필요를 감당하지 못하는 방향으로 진행되고 있는 기후 위기에 대한 대책과 시도들은 비극적으로 실패할 것이라는 점.

그리고 둘째로, 그러한 basic need란 단지 음식, heal care건강관리, 주택과 같은 것만이 아니라, "존엄과 연대의 형식"을 포함하는 것이다. 현 체제는 바로 이 "존엄과 연대의 다양한 형식"이라는 압도적으로 많은 지구 주민의 기본적 필요를 파괴하기 위해 모든 것을 다하고 있는 중이다.

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이 글을 읽고 이런 제목을 붙여보았다.

<전철 요금과 존엄>

'공정성'에 대한 논의가 한참일 때 공정, 윤리, 혐오, 적대, 차별 같은 '상부구조'에 몰두하지 말고 이제야말로 '토대'를 돌볼 때라는 경제학자의 칼럼을 본 적이 있다. 물론 전략적인 단순화이겠다.

경제는 '토대론'으로 정동은 '감정론'으로 양분화되는 한국 사회의 담론 구조는 여전히 주관과 객관, 물질적인 것과 비물질적인 것에 대한 고전적 분할을 반복한다.

'한국 진보'의 시각에서 볼리비아와 홍콩이 제3세계와 신자유주의 도시로 분할되고 할당되기를 반복하듯이 말이다.

이 글의 필자는 홍콩, 볼리비아, 레바논에서 일어나는 일련의 저항은 동떨어진 것처럼 보이지만 모두 공통적인 문제the common them 공유하고 있다고 본다.

간단한 요약

알제리아, 볼리비아, 칠레, 콜롬비아, 에쿠아도르, 이집트, 프랑스, 독일, 기니아, 아이티, 온두라스, 홍콩, 인디아, 인도네시아, 이란, 이라크 레바논, 네델란드, 스페인, 수단, 영국, 짐바브위에 등 미처 다 언급하지 못한 저항의 목록도 있을 것.

이 저항은 지난 9월 이후 동시다발적으로 진행되고 있다. 뉴욕 타임즈는 최근의 이런 사태의 연속을 주로 “재정문제pocketbook issue”로 규정했지만, 필자는 그런 식의 해석에 동의하지는 않는다고 평.

표면적으로는 그들을 하나로 묶는 것이 거의 없어 보인다. 이란에서는 연료 가격이 50% 인상되었다는 발표가 그것을 촉발시켰다. 독일 네덜란드 프랑스에서는 농민들이 고속도로를 봉쇄해 환경규제에 항의했다. 6월 이후 홍콩을 뒤흔들고 있는 분노는 중국 본토로의 송환을 허용하는 법안을 발의하면서 시작되었다. 칠레에서는 대중교통비 인상, 인도네시아에서는 강력한 범죄법안, 레바논에서는 휘발유부터 모든 것에 대한 새로운 세금의 발표가 있었다.

이러한 움직임들 중 일부는 노조나 공식적인 야당에 의해 조직되었지만, 많은 사람들은 수평적이고 지도력이 없는 종류다. ( 브루스 리의 말을 변용하여 홍콩 시위자들이 채용한 구호, "물처럼 되어라"가 보여주듯이) 어떤 중요한 혁명 이념도 그들을 하나로 묶지 않는다. 어떤 선봉당도 전선으로 돌진하지 않는다. 지난 세기의 대부분 기간 동안 세계를 대립적으로 해석했던 죄파적이거나 우파적인 시각은 거의 도움이 되지 못한다.

홍콩과 이란 시위를 배후에서 지지하는 것이 미국이라는 '좌파적 분석' 역시 그 한계를 드러내고 있다.

---
특히 엘리트와 대중의 경험이 엄청나게 괴리되고 있는 현실이 이 사태의 근본에 놓여있다.

또 IMF라는 오래된 글로벌 경제-모델로 인한 착취의 가속화.

그리고 존엄에 대한 요구.

존엄성이란 흥미로운 것이다. 일단 되찾으면 포기하기가 더 어려워진다. 시위자들의 요구는 거의 모든 곳에서 그들을 촉발시킨 원래의 분노를 훨씬 넘어 확대되었다.

레바논에서, 시위자들은 그들의 운동이 혁명으로 간주되는지에 대해 논쟁하고 있다. (지구에서 가장 민영화된 곳 중 하나인 베이루트, 홍콩, 칠레에서 이런 격렬한 시위가 일어난 것은 놀랄 일이 아니다.)

레바논에서, 시위자들은 그들의 운동이 혁명으로 간주되는지에 대해 논쟁하고 있다. (지구에서 가장 민영화된 곳 중 하나인 베이루트, 홍콩, 칠레에서 이런 격렬한 시위가 일어난 것은 놀랄 일이 아니다.) 수단에서는 오마르 알 바시르 정부가 "국제 대출 파트너들의 제의로" 밀과 연료 보조금을 삭감하면서 시작된 폭동이 그의 30년 정권을 무너뜨리고 아직 싸움을 멈추지 않고 있다. 아이티에서도 1년여 전 조베넬 모이스 대통령이 국제통화기금(IMF)의 환심을 사기 위해 연료 가격을 대폭 인상하면서 시위가 시작됐다.

아이티뿐만 아니라 에콰도르에서 짐바브웨에 이르는 적어도 6개 국가에서 휘발유 가격 인상으로 촉발된 것을 알아차리기는 어렵다. 지구상에서 견딜 수 있는 인간 생명을 보존할 수 있는 희망을 가지려면 당장 화석 연료에서 벗어나야 한다는 것은 비밀이 아니지만, 비록 이 나라들 대부분이 기후 위기로 인해 피해를 입었고, 가장 취약한 시민들이 가장 많이 피해를 입었지만, 결국 IMF와의 타협으로 귀결되었다.

이 모든 사태의 교훈은 매우 분명하다. 첫째, 압도적으로 많은 지구 주민의 basic need기본적 필요를 감당하지 못하는 방향으로 진행되고 있는 기후 위기에 대한 대책과 시도들은 비극적으로 실패할 것이라는 점.

그리고 둘째로, 그러한 basic need란 단지 음식, heal care건강관리, 주택과 같은 것만이 아니라, "존엄과 연대의 형식"을 포함하는 것이다. 현 체제는 바로 이 "존엄과 연대의 다양한 형식"이라는 압도적으로 많은 지구 주민의 기본적 필요를 파괴하기 위해 모든 것을 다하고 있는 중이다.

그렇게 많은 사건들이 한꺼번에 TV 뉴스에서 거의 언급되지 않는 것이 이상하지 않은가?

이달 초, 소설가 도미니크 에데는 레바논의 대중적인 봉기에 대해 "수십만의 외로운 사람들이 끝없는 동면 끝에, 혼자가 아니라는 것을 발견했던 것 같다"고 썼다.

만약 우리가 단지 보기만 한다면, 우리는 전 세계에서 똑같은 일이 일어나고 있다는 것을 볼 수 있을 것이다.

사람들이 함께 깨어나서, 주위를 둘러보다가, 둘러보고 있는 서로를 발견하게 된 것이다.

 

신자유주의에 저항하는 전지구적 저항에 초대되신 걸 환영합니다.hwp

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