About Lausan
Members of Lausan Collective came together in 2019 in order to translate and amplify left interventions in Hong Kong’s Anti-Extradition Bill movement. We saw the need for a platform for critical left voices in the city’s ongoing movement for self-determination and the possibilities of connecting it with other liberatory uprisings across the world.
Our name reflects this commitment to the long-term work of contributing to the enduring but often marginalized tradition of Hong Kong’s leftist activists, writers and organizers: 傘 (“san”) is the character for umbrella, referencing our ongoing critical engagement with Hong Kong’s social movements. 流傘 is also a homophone of 流散 (decentralized/diaspora), referencing our dispersal across the world.
Our transnational work centering on Hong Kong has also brought us into contact with others across Asia who also resist authoritarianism and neoliberalism. This has made regional solidarity a long-running aspect of our work and we aim to continue providing a space for political discussion and international solidarity with ongoing struggles in Hong Kong and its diasporas from a radical left perspective.
We also aim to articulate new connections with multiple, global arenas of struggle, including Indigenous liberation, Asian diasporic politics, and racial justice, decolonial and abolition movements. Because of the breadth of our work, we see a need to maintain an independent, non-sectarian platform to analyze the plurality of grassroots mass movements building alternatives to limiting state-centered frameworks including the nationalist response to today’s so-called “New Cold War.” Instead of relying on any party or state media reporting of these movements, our goal is to provide realistic assessments of material conditions, which we believe can form the basis for international, grassroots, and practice-based left solidarity across Asia and its diasporas.
This commitment to non-state-centered opposition means that we view the present contradictions of advanced capital as defined by the valorization of states that oppose the hegemony of the U.S. not through liberatory or socialist means, but through their own imperialist, militarist, and capitalist practices. The result is a complex reality of simultaneous competition and collaboration dictated by the demands of the global market, which sees capital unevenly enlist nation-states from centers and peripheries alike to perpetuate colonial and neo-colonial hierarchies—from race and caste, to sex, gender, and class divisions. We can see this most clearly in today’s displacement of capital from centers, onto BRICS nations, and further into peripheral nations that were once part of the Third World bloc.
Some commentators have rationalized the exorbitant human costs of settler colonialism and capitalist hyper-exploitation through resurgent discourses of neo-statism and nationalism, arguing that they are necessary practices to maintain state sovereignty amidst deepening military tensions. This demonstrates the endurance of capitalist value production, accumulation, and the market at the core of the social order of “actually existing socialism.” At once these activists claim to stand on the socialist side, with “the people,” while simultaneously downplaying the suffering of those in global peripheries who are being churned through the gears of stagist developmentalism and the building of productive forces.
We at Lausan see these human wages as non-trivial.
We begin our outward-facing analysis from Hong Kong because its structured non-sovereignty means that it is an apt site from which to understand imperialism, nationalism, capitalist hyper-exploitation, and the nation-state form on a global scale. Because our work is international in scope, we believe radical anti-capitalist futures must center cross-border solidarities based on class struggle, climate justice, migrant justice, anti-racism, and feminism—for everyone, everywhere.
We are 100% independent and volunteer-run.
關於流傘
“流傘”（Lausan Collective）成員於2019年聚集在一起，旨在翻譯和放大左翼對於香港反送中運動的介入。我們看到這場持續的自決運動需要一個平台來承載批判性的左翼聲音，也看到將其與世界各地其他解放起義相連接的可能性。
我們團體的名字反映了這種長期工作的承諾，即為香港左翼活動家、作家和組織者持久但常常邊緣化的傳統做出貢獻。「傘」取自雨傘，意味著我們對於香港民主自決運動的相互反思與批判。「流傘」也是 「流散」的諧音，除了體現我們跨國離散的處境，還隱喻反建制抗爭中去中心化之原則。
圍繞香港的跨國工作也讓我們與亞洲其他抵抗威權主義和新自由主義的人士取得了聯繫。這使得區域團結成為我們工作的長期方向。我們的目標是從激進左翼的角度為香港及其僑民的持續鬥爭提供政治討論和國際團結的空間。
我們還力求與多個全球鬥爭領域建立新的聯繫，包括原住民解放、亞洲僑民政治、種族正義、去殖民化和廢警運動。由於我們工作的廣泛性，我們認為有必要保持一個獨立的、非宗派的平台，以分析建立替代以國家為中心的限制性框架的基層群眾運動的多元性，包括對今天所謂“新冷戰”的民族主義反應。我們的目標是提供對物質條件的現實評估——我們相信這可以成為整個亞洲及其僑民在國際、基層和實踐層面上實現左翼團結的基礎，而不是依賴任何政黨或國家媒體對這些運動的報導。
承諾不以國家為中心的反對，意味著我們認為先進資本目前的矛盾是由那些並非通過解放或社會主義手段，而是通過自身的帝國主義、軍國主義和資本主義行徑來反對美國霸權的國家的價值增殖（valorization）所決定。其結果是一個由全球市場需求決定的、同時競爭和合作的複雜現實，其中資本不均衡地網羅從中心到外圍的民族國家，以延續殖民主義和新殖民主義的等級制度——從種族和種姓，到性、性別和階級的劃分。如今資本從中心地帶轉移到金磚國家，並進一步轉移到曾屬於第三世界的國家，讓我們可以最清楚地看到這一點。
一些評論家通過重新出現的新國家主義（neo-statism）和民族主義話語，將定居者殖民主義（settler colonialism）和資本主義超級剝削高昂的人類代價合理化，認為這是在不斷加深的軍事緊張局勢中維護國家主權的必要做法。這表明資本主義的價值生產、積累和市場在“實際存在的社會主義”社會秩序核心中是持久的。這些活動家聲稱他们站在社會主義一邊，與“人民”站在一起，但同時又淡化全球邊緣地區人民的痛苦，無視階段性發展主義（stagist developmentalism）和生產力建設的齒輪對後者的絞殺。作為“流傘”成員，我們認為這些人類代價是重大的。
從香港開始外向分析，是因為這座城市的結構性非主權意味著這裡非常適合理解帝國主義、民族主義、資本主義的過度剝削以及全球範圍的民族國家形式。因為我們的工作是國際性的，所有我們相信激進的反資本主義未來必須以基於階級鬥爭、氣候正義、移民正義、反種族主義和女權主義的跨境團結為中心，必須為每個人、每個地方而鬥爭。
我們是100%獨立且由志願者運營的團體。
Graphic: spf.pdf for Lausan.
