A-Infos (en) avtonom: Problems of the protest in Belarus [machine translation]

For the success of the people's political struggle, it is necessary not only to 
fightagainst , but also to fightfor . It is not enough to overthrow even the 
worst regime; you also need to build a better life on its ruins. Therefore, 
people inevitably have the question of what will happen after the overthrow of 
the government. If people do not have an understandingofwhat we are fighting for, 
then the motivation to fight also decreases. And even if, despite this, victory 
is achieved and the regime is overthrown, then provocateurs can easily take 
advantage of the fruits of victory, and the life of the people will worsen.
At the initial stage of the protest in Belarus, a positive goal was to fight for 
fair elections. Demanding the restoration of legality without revolutionary 
changes. The problem with such a goal is that it is weak. If they did not succeed 
immediately, then the demands of the protesters become more radical, and in order 
to fightforit, an image of the future is needed, which will become achievable 
after the overthrow of the Lukashenka regime.

The only political force that has an image of the future is Western liberals. 
Therefore, it was they who led the protest. Other political forces, in particular 
the left, do not have an image of the future, so they immediately found 
themselves on the sidelines. The privatization of the protest by the liberals led 
to the following. If the fight against Lukashenka and for fair elections was 
supported by the majority of the population, then not all Belarusians share 
Western values. Therefore, support for the protest began to fall.

A similar situation was in Russia in 2011. When electoral fraud also sparked 
massive protests and the protest was led by liberals. After that, the protest 
lost general support and gradually faded away. That opened the way for the 
strengthening of the dictatorship and further fascization of the Russian government.

For the protest to remain popular, enjoy universal support and cannot be used by 
provocateurs to worsen the life of the people, an image of the future is needed 
that will be real, understandable and beneficial to the ordinary citizen. This 
image of the future consists of specific requirements that people can use to 
assess the usefulness of any government and any political forces - today, 
tomorrow, revolutionary, post-revolutionary.

A hundred years ago, people fought for their specific rights and opportunities - 
equality of all before the law, an 8-hour working day, paid leave, affordable 
education and medicine, land and factories owned by peasants and workers, etc. 
That political program is outdated - some of those requirements have been 
fulfilled, some have lost their relevance. We need new specific requirements that 
are relevant for today's citizens.

The key principle of a viable political program is the unity of legal and 
material requirements:

"We know very well that even if we achieve land, income tax, universal compulsory 
gratuitous training and the replacement of a standing army with a people's 
militia, there will still be little sense, because the government can take it all 
back from us. Therefore, we need a broad opportunity to protect our rights and 
interests.To do this, we need to be given complete freedom to speak and write in 
defense of our interests and to expose any untruths of the authorities and frauds 
of the rich, freely organize meetings to discuss our needs, form alliances to 
defend our rights. , we wish that no one in the state could be imprisoned at the 
discretion of the authorities, could not be searched without the permission of 
the court - in a word, that there was complete inviolability of the person and 
home of all citizens.And for the judges to be fair, not to indulge the 
authorities and to please them do not oppress citizens with searches and arrests, 
we demand that they not be subject to the authorities: let them be chosen by the 
whole people and let them be prosecuted for wrong deeds. "// Order Ivantsevsky 
rural society of Lukoyanovskaya vol., Nizhny Novgorod province in the II State 
Duma (April 1907) Kara-Murza Civil war.

Unfortunately, over the past century, political thought has degraded, and today 
the majority of citizens do not understand the need to fight for their rights. 
Waiting for the leader to come and take care of them. As long as this situation 
continues, it is naive to count on the improvement of our life.

The most correct and good goal is useless until there is a subject who is 
interested in achieving this goal. The oligarchy, the nomenklatura and the state 
are not interested in improving the life of the people. Only citizens themselves 
can force the state to take into account the interests of the people. And for 
this we need to increase our political subjectivity. As long as the people are a 
crowd of powerless individuals, the authorities will not act in the interests of 
the people. Whatever slogans the power is covered with. Provocateurs, careerists 
and self-seekers feel great under any slogans.

Today's left movement is terribly far from the people. To become a viable 
political force again, the left must lead the citizens' struggle fortheircivil 
rights. As it was a century ago. Without reliance on citizens' self-organization, 
the leftist movement is an empty wrapper.

And activists need to know, apply and disseminate those anarcho-communist tools 
that can increase the opportunities of people here and now. In particular:

Self-organizing principlesfor grassroots engagement.
A networked organizationfor political struggle.
Self-organizedor at least adelocraticenterprise for labor activities.
As long as citizens do not have an image of the future, consisting of specific 
rights, opportunities and requirements, political struggle is pointless. You 
cannot fight for all good and against all bad. Such a struggle is easily used by 
oligarchic groups in their own interests, and the life of the people does not 
change for the better.

Marx's mistake or the real path to communism
Join the groupFrom Self-Organization to Communism , dedicated to the introduction 
of communist relations into our lives.

https://avtonom.org/freenews/problemy-protesta-belorussii
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