Kit Klarenberg exposes how the West weaponized “human rights” after the Helsinki Accords, turning a noble idea into a tool for regime change, sanctions, and imperial wars.
As legal scholar Samuel Moyn has extensively documented, the Accords played a pivotal role in decisively shifting mainstream rights discourse away from any and all economic or social considerations. More gravely, per Moyn, “the idea of human rights” was converted “into a warrant for shaming state oppressors.” Resultantly, Western imperialist brutality against purported foreign rights abusers - including sanctions, destabilisation campaigns, coups, and outright military intervention - could be justified, frequently assisted by the ostensibly neutral findings of organisations such as Amnesty International, and HRW…
Go figure.
In 1981, Czechoslovak playwright and Charter 77 spokesperson Zdena Tominová conducted a tour of the West. In a speech in Dublin, Ireland, she spoke of how she’d witnessed first-hand how her country’s population had benefited enormously from the state’s Communist policies. Tominová made clear she sought to fully maintain all its public-wide economic and social benefits, while adopting Western-style political freedoms only. It was a shocking statement to make for a woman who’d risked imprisonment to oppose her government with foreign help so publicly:
“All of a sudden, I was not underprivileged and could do everything…I think that, if this world has a future, it is as a socialist society, which I understand to mean a society where nobody has priorities just because he happens to come from a rich family,” Tominová declared. She moreover made clear her vision was global in nature - “the world of social justice for all people has to come about.” But this was not to be.
Instead, Eastern Bloc countries suffered deeply ravaging transitions to capitalism via “shock therapy”, eradicating much of what citizens held dear about the systems under which they’d previously lived. They were thrust into a wholly new world, where hitherto unknown homelessness, hunger, inequality, unemployment, and other societal ills became commonplace, rather than prevented by basic state guarantee. After all, as decreed by the Helsinki Accords, such phenomena didn’t constitute egregious breaches of “human rights”, but instead were the unavoidable product of the very political “freedom” for which they had fought.
As the fruits of Western labor go more to the owner class, Western workers will see through the illusion. The longer that takes, the more difficult extraction from the Web will be.
I’m reminded of an excerpt from Blackshirts & Reds:
I listened to an East German friend complain of poor services and inferior products; the system did not work, he concluded. But what of the numerous social benefits so lacking in much of the world, I asked, aren’t these to be valued? His response was revealing: “Oh, nobody ever talks about that.” People took for granted what they had in the way of human services and entitlements while hungering for the consumer goods dangling in their imaginations.
The human capacity for discontent should not be underestimated. People cannot live on the social wage alone.
American imperialism, the devastation of WWII, and capitalist concessions all allowed for higher living standards for white Americans and others in the imperial core. Plenty of people were attracted to the West due to the perceived material conditions. And as you said, the Western working class will see fewer crumbs as capitalism decays and the world enters multi-polarity. I only hope that it results in a resurgence in communist movements in the West.
I look at how after a generation or few, if material conditions aren’t choked by natural weather patterns or artificially, from embargos, war, or what have you, after farming and solid infrastructure takes root and evolves, treats can still be had, in addition to social services, hopefully with more fair exchange and cooperation with other states. The standard of living in China seems greatly improved, for example. Of course we’ve done terrible injustice to our habitat, so conditions are shifting and will be challenging, but I’m fairly confident if we include our habitat in our plans, we can mitigate a good bit of the damage already done.
There was also blatant propaganda portraying live of a petty-middle burgie in West Germany and USA as average, available for any worker if only the system changed to capitalism. And worst enough, this shit was allowed in socialist countries.
It is incredible how harmful naivety can be. A person who wants to keep all of the material benefits of socialism yet works hand in hand with agents of empire to undermine the very socialist state that gave them those benefits just because they want some abstract liberal “political freedoms”. Well, how did that turn out for you, now that you destroyed your socialist government? Do you live in the paradise that you were promised in exchange for betraying your country?
Do you live in the paradise that you were promised in exchange for betraying your country?
And that’s a part of naivety. The trailblazer knows it’s going to take hard work, diligence, and vigilance to get and keep us where we want to be, or at least from erosion of that we fight for, the fruit of which the first (or new) generation of thinkers, fighters, laborers may never see. Each generation that comes after gets more comfortable, more complacent. I feel that’s one of the things Castro got right, but also that the continued embargo and other Western pressures and aggressions definitely helped reinforce. A pity other socialist states didn’t look to the Cuban and Korean people for strength and resilience, and took bait after bait of aid and deals from modern imperialist states.
I really have it in my mind to dig into the juche philosophy at some point.
A pity other socialist states didn’t look to the Cuban and Korean people for strength and resilience […] I really have it in my mind to dig into the juche philosophy at some point.
Same. That is one of the things i really admire about Juche, the emphasis on resilience, unwavering vigilence, discipline and dedication. It is like a vaccine against that naivety and nihilism that brought down the eastern bloc.
Go figure.
As the fruits of Western labor go more to the owner class, Western workers will see through the illusion. The longer that takes, the more difficult extraction from the Web will be.
I’m reminded of an excerpt from Blackshirts & Reds:
American imperialism, the devastation of WWII, and capitalist concessions all allowed for higher living standards for white Americans and others in the imperial core. Plenty of people were attracted to the West due to the perceived material conditions. And as you said, the Western working class will see fewer crumbs as capitalism decays and the world enters multi-polarity. I only hope that it results in a resurgence in communist movements in the West.
I look at how after a generation or few, if material conditions aren’t choked by natural weather patterns or artificially, from embargos, war, or what have you, after farming and solid infrastructure takes root and evolves, treats can still be had, in addition to social services, hopefully with more fair exchange and cooperation with other states. The standard of living in China seems greatly improved, for example. Of course we’ve done terrible injustice to our habitat, so conditions are shifting and will be challenging, but I’m fairly confident if we include our habitat in our plans, we can mitigate a good bit of the damage already done.
There was also blatant propaganda portraying live of a petty-middle burgie in West Germany and USA as average, available for any worker if only the system changed to capitalism. And worst enough, this shit was allowed in socialist countries.
It is incredible how harmful naivety can be. A person who wants to keep all of the material benefits of socialism yet works hand in hand with agents of empire to undermine the very socialist state that gave them those benefits just because they want some abstract liberal “political freedoms”. Well, how did that turn out for you, now that you destroyed your socialist government? Do you live in the paradise that you were promised in exchange for betraying your country?
And that’s a part of naivety. The trailblazer knows it’s going to take hard work, diligence, and vigilance to get and keep us where we want to be, or at least from erosion of that we fight for, the fruit of which the first (or new) generation of thinkers, fighters, laborers may never see. Each generation that comes after gets more comfortable, more complacent. I feel that’s one of the things Castro got right, but also that the continued embargo and other Western pressures and aggressions definitely helped reinforce. A pity other socialist states didn’t look to the Cuban and Korean people for strength and resilience, and took bait after bait of aid and deals from modern imperialist states.
I really have it in my mind to dig into the juche philosophy at some point.
Same. That is one of the things i really admire about Juche, the emphasis on resilience, unwavering vigilence, discipline and dedication. It is like a vaccine against that naivety and nihilism that brought down the eastern bloc.