- The Guardian
- Issue #2135
The so-called “Western countries” are not, and never have been, the advanced guard of progressive society. There are certainly hard won gains, small advances made through the sheer courage of working women and minorities in countries like ours. But it’s always been ‘despite,’ not ‘because.’ When the see-saw of electoral politics falls to the likes of Trump and Dutton, all previous gains are rolled back.
Under the capitalist regime the trend is always backwards.
There is no sustainable progressivism in Australia. For every step there are ten steps back. When a far-right (Liberal) or right-neoliberal (Labor) government pays its way into power, women’s rights are not guaranteed, because we cannot guarantee a government that stands by women no matter what. We cannot guarantee that the proponents of neo-liberalism, whether Biden, Macron, or Albo, want to save us from the far-right bigots and fascists. In fact, they regularly do deals with the fascists.
To say that the United States of America has taken a fascistic turn is an understatement.
We know Western countries don’t really care about progressive politics because of what they’ve done historically. The USA has invaded some of the world’s most progressive states just as they were beginning to succeed – it spent billions undermining socialist Afghanistan, which had the most progressive education system for women and girls in the Arab world. More billions were spent destroying the National Progressive Front in Syria, one of the last progressive popular fronts in the Arab world, through the criminal CIA operation ‘Timber Sycamore.’
The USA is currently trying to undermine Cuba, which has Latin America’s most progressive Family Codes, bringing equal rights to LGBTQIA+ people in Cuban society. China is also attacked by the West, but the gains made for women there out of feudalism into socialism are extraordinary. One study noted that “If we use female labor force participation as the indicator to measure gender equality, China would be one of the most egalitarian countries in the world: female labor force participation in China increased dramatically after the founding of the People’s Republic.”
Again, the corporate governments of the West are the sworn global enemy of advanced progressive society. They did not invent progressivism. They do not care about progressive politics. They care about capitalism, not people. They see progressive societies as a threat.
There is hope, however, for a more sustainable advance towards moderately progressive societies across the world. Kumara Jayawardena’s marvelous 1986 book Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World is still great reading. Jayawardena shows that women outside the Western countries have taken matters into their own hands. Progressive movements and modern ideas have been adapted to the national conditions of countries across the Third World, from Egypt to Iran, Turkey, India, Sri Lanka, China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia. This continues today with the One Billion Rising campaign to end violence against women. It’s a global struggle.
Communists have always been progressive. We have always been at the very front line of socially progressive politics. No matter how much it may be co-opted by the powers that be, we see a radical kernel in trans, non-binary struggles in Australia, because we treat the contradiction of the majority and the minorities seriously, and we see the struggles of women, trans people and minorities as material struggles, economic struggles – struggles for democratic access to safety and security, to livelihoods.
Western media pretends it invented progressive politics. We know it did not. Those of us in the belly of the beast have to keep up the fight for a socialist system, a sustainable progressivism based on economics as well as on law, that can bring permanent benefits and long-term rights to women and minorities.
