We are not in the best position to diagnose or analyze certain political currents or individuals who claim to be left-wing and who, for a certain time, represented the camp of class struggle, of revolutionary change. But since it is a national cause, even without authorization, we decide to share our points of view. Is the flame of the Haitian left extinguished or do other objectives of the established order take precedence over it? It is not because we want to uncover a truth, unmask or deconstruct a myth or reveal the hidden side of certain political gravediggers that we are asking this question. The context and the situation force us to do so.
Indeed, it is the reality of the moment that led us to this questioning. Concretely, it has been a long time since we noted the absence of a true interpreter of the desires and aspirations of the Haitian people at the organizational level. If we judge men by their works, we can say that the struggle of the masses has long been without a charismatic leader, a valid guide, a credible spokesperson recognized as capable. to appropriate the deep demands of the working classes to give them more resonance and readability. However, there is a panoply of left-wing and revolutionary organizations and parties operating inside the country and even outside.
Being left-wing doesn’t mean being ready to sacrifice oneself for a political and social Revolution, in short, ready to die for one’s ideological and philosophical convictions? Precisely, the Haitian people have been able, yesterday and today, to demonstrate insightful anti-imperialism, demonstrating that they have faith in their revolutionary and progressive convictions. What has changed when certain left-wing activists no longer have the courage to take the risks of joining the struggle and supporting these people? Instead of mobilizing the working masses, guiding them in a great fight for change, some take pleasure in directives coming from outside and devote themselves to imperialist prayer to fulfill their needs or their wishes.
In Haiti, it has been a long time since we have read a major fundamental text of scope, translating a position of principle and orientation, of reference and commitment capable of allowing the Haitian left in general and the masses popular in particular to open their eyes and their ears in order to succeed in transforming not only society, but their mentality to become new human beings, not wolves for their neighbors. Others, for lack of arguments to support their cynicism and their demagogic position, prefer to take refuge in sterile polemics, in the war of egos to avoid addressing fundamental questions.
Proud and contemplative in the face of the political, economic and social debacle of the elites, some of these members have become propagandists for the discourse of the dominant powers. Devoid of any ability to understand, they confuse differences, political disagreements and personal conflicts. According to them, political opponents automatically mean death penalty, hatred, even going so far as to break off all contact with others. Whereas, it is a right that we have to have contradictory ideas on any subject.
Taking refuge in acts of sabotage and not accepting contradiction are specific to reactionary macoutic regimes. Such actions have nothing to do with the notion of democracy, or even the practices of a revolutionary left.
How can we explain that this left, if it still exists, whether across the country or elsewhere, has kept deathly silent on the new neocolonial exactions of occupation and establishment of a military base of American imperialism in Haiti? ? No patriotic demonstration, no note of contestation or protest to denounce imperialism against this act of foreign tutelage; let’s not talk about the Presidential Transitional Council, with which this bickering left is in the process of speaking.
The left is marching on the slogans of American propaganda and capitalist octopuses ruining the country. Some of its members already behave like rights holders. They can ally themselves with the imperial monster and collaborate with the lumpen-bourgeoisie, but you have no right to report it, nor to criticize them nor to inform the masses of their unpatriotic actions. It is truly a shame today for the so-called progressives claiming to belong to a certain left, many of whom are candidates for the post of Prime Minister. Defining oneself in this way, is it a sufficient criterion to be anti-imperialist?
As for the favor of events, they project themselves as pawns of imperialism, and even anti-communists, criticizing Cuba while praising the United States of America. They no longer even adopt the posture of café or living room revolutionaries. Difficult, in fact, to understand someone today adopting the ideological vocabulary of the reactionary establishment, while abandoning the field of struggle and good old militant slogans of yesteryear, such as: only one solution, Revolution, proclaim anti-imperialist!
Can someone who is committed to the ideal and philosophy of a right and left Washington Presidential Council still dare to declare themselves anti-imperialist? The one who made the “Oath” of allegiance, to accept the invasion of his country to plunder its natural resources, proves that he has never been at the vanguard of the masses and does not belong to the left anti-imperialist. Moreover, even if this Presidential Council is for change, due to the fact that it is against any form of revolution, this claim is hardly an anti-imperialist left but rather a social-democratic reformism.
So, we can finally understand the reasons why this left will not be able to make the class break announced against the capitalist system. What is happening now is to a large extent completely natural, understandable. Because faced with the existing reality, there are people who resign themselves to this inevitability; people who adapt to this imperialist rhetoric. They have no desire to fight for fundamental change requiring uncompromising hatred of the enemy of the oppressed and exploited classes. The current Haitian left, subservient to the ruling classes already benefiting from the fallout from this Presidential Transitional Council, has neither ideological credibility nor moral and political legitimacy capable of proving its anti-imperialist character!
