Raúl Zibechi has long been one of the leading leftist journalists in Latin America. He has gained unique and powerful perspectives through his accompaniment of “pueblos in movement,” ranging from the Zapatistas to the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST). He is also a major theorist of autonomismo, an antistatist current that over the past three decades has gained importance throughout the region.
His new book offers a sustained critique of the global and especially the Latin American Left. His fundamental criticism is that the Left's strategy to obtain power via either armed struggle or electoral politics reproduces the “coloniality of power,” the gender and ethnic hierarchies that the capitalist state has relied on for centuries. Zibechi leans on the Greek-French scholar Cornelius Castoriadis's career-long leftist critique of the theory and practice of Marxism and Leninism. What's unique is Zibechi's methodological approach and some of his illustrative case...
