Okay TakesI saw the following three articles about the uprising-turned-coup in Bolivia, in this order:
- La Noche de los cristales rotos
- Un levantamiento popular aprovechado por la ultraderecha (by Raúl Zibechi)
- They are not Evo supporters! They are Alteños, dammit!
All three embody what was, in their moment, the most critical, feminist, anti-racist, anti-statist available position on the events in Bolivia.
Recent geopolitics in Latin America make clear that the capitalist right is well-positioned to seize power wherever the Pink Tide recedes. Opposition to Morales from the left, then, could not have been strategically viable as a road to popular left power.
What unites these articles, then, is a politics of atactical, endless oppositionality. This is a politics in which victory is not an object—that is, it is not interested in bringing about a free, pluralistic, equitable, and just world. Rather, it is centrally concerned with voicing the most ethical position in any situation.
These ethics are centered on the values listed above—freedom, pluralism, equity, and justice—they are ethics that I share. But the practice of changing the world in accordance with these values is the domain of politics.
Politics without tactics isn't politics; it's moralizing. There is a time and place for moralizing, but it isn't on the street, with the right at your back.