I appreciate you clarifying, there’s more we agree on than not.
You’re absolutely right to emphasize the role of workers in the chain. The process from A to B to C doesn’t function without their labor, and too often, they’re rendered invisible in both capitalist and state narratives. That’s a vital reminder. Any left project that doesn’t center workers, from land to factory to distribution, loses its soul. And you’re right: the roots of chocolate’s prominence today aren’t just cultural, they’re exploitative. The commodity’s journey is soaked in colonial extraction, and in many ways, that legacy persists.
Your mention of white supremacist funding and KKK ties to regional destabilization is important. I don’t doubt it. U.S. foreign policy, especially in Latin America, has long served as a tool for white capitalist expansion, from the School of the Americas to paramilitary support. That history deserves more light, not less.
Now, on the worry about corruption and state overreach, I hear you. The cycle you’re pointing to is real: revolutionary governments co-opted, bureaucracies bloated, the people once again crushed beneath a new elite. But here’s where we may differ: I don’t have blind faith in governance. I have faith in people. And that includes the right of people to shape their governments, to build horizontal structures of power, to hold any institution accountable, whether it wears a suit or a state badge.
Power can corrupt, but it also depends on how it’s held. When governance is democratized, truly democratized, not just through ballots but through councils, unions, communal ownership, it doesn’t have to recreate capitalist hierarchies. Projects like Zapatista autonomy in Chiapas or Rojava in Syria show that state and market aren’t the only models. People can create something else if they have the space.
Your closing line hits hard. Maybe I do have more faith than you in the potential of governance, not because mine hasn’t taken from me, but because I believe in reclaiming what it has. Governance should serve, not rule. If it rules, it’s time to resist. And if people rise when they’re suppressed, then so be it. I stand with them.
I appreciate you clarifying, there’s more we agree on than not.
You’re absolutely right to emphasize the role of workers in the chain. The process from A to B to C doesn’t function without their labor, and too often, they’re rendered invisible in both capitalist and state narratives. That’s a vital reminder. Any left project that doesn’t center workers, from land to factory to distribution, loses its soul. And you’re right: the roots of chocolate’s prominence today aren’t just cultural, they’re exploitative. The commodity’s journey is soaked in colonial extraction, and in many ways, that legacy persists.
Your mention of white supremacist funding and KKK ties to regional destabilization is important. I don’t doubt it. U.S. foreign policy, especially in Latin America, has long served as a tool for white capitalist expansion, from the School of the Americas to paramilitary support. That history deserves more light, not less.
Now, on the worry about corruption and state overreach, I hear you. The cycle you’re pointing to is real: revolutionary governments co-opted, bureaucracies bloated, the people once again crushed beneath a new elite. But here’s where we may differ: I don’t have blind faith in governance. I have faith in people. And that includes the right of people to shape their governments, to build horizontal structures of power, to hold any institution accountable, whether it wears a suit or a state badge.
Power can corrupt, but it also depends on how it’s held. When governance is democratized, truly democratized, not just through ballots but through councils, unions, communal ownership, it doesn’t have to recreate capitalist hierarchies. Projects like Zapatista autonomy in Chiapas or Rojava in Syria show that state and market aren’t the only models. People can create something else if they have the space.
Your closing line hits hard. Maybe I do have more faith than you in the potential of governance, not because mine hasn’t taken from me, but because I believe in reclaiming what it has. Governance should serve, not rule. If it rules, it’s time to resist. And if people rise when they’re suppressed, then so be it. I stand with them.