Thoughts on production, alienation, and ideology
These are posts on activism from the blog Base and Superstructure. This takes many forms. The focus here is on political activism, above all on activist organizing and base-building. One concern is how to build effective movements. There’s also a need to create solidarity with fellow members and build coalitions with other groups. The main aim of good movements is to work together to advance material interests. This section also includes critiques of electoral work, and discussion of how and when to use elections to advance activist goals. Navigating the balance between grassroots work and electoral work is difficult for everyone.
Many Americans talk about politics in confused ways. The confusion comes from a variety of missteps they make along the way. But one central political mistake stands out to me. It’s the one mistake most people make – even most leftists. And it holds together many of the others.
What’s that mistake, you ask?
In a recent issue of Catalyst, William Avilés and Earlen Gutierrez take up a classic leftist topic. But it’s one that seems to have left the stage decades ago. In short, should the left organize soldiers?
The question left the stage, in part, because of a shift in the base and cultural politics of the left. As the socialist left turned away from organizing, it lost the connections with working class Americans it had built as recently as the 1950s and 1960s. And since the progressives were always grounded in a relatively wealthy and highly educated base, they never had much contact with the sorts of people who become soldiers.
So, the left removed itself from the stage. And the progressives moved in a different direction.
But let’s return to the question. I think it can bring a certain focus.
A couple years ago, I listened to the Russian Revolution season of Mike Duncan’s podcast Revolutions. Readers might recall that I had a few things to say about the podcast when tsk-tsking Duncan about Marx on profit.
In fact, I think it’s overall a great podcast. And I listened to it again, this time hitting all seasons and not just the one on Russia.
As I listened to how the various revolutions strayed off course, I thought about how their leaders engaged with the population. That is to say, I thought about how the revolutionaries related to the average person in these societies. I especially thought about this in light of the French and Russian Revolutions, two revolutions that featured at least some conception of a society built in the interests of the people as a whole.
I never asked my friend Dick Leitsch when it was time to retire from activism. But he did tell me when he decided to retire.
Dick was 40 years old and the gay liberation movement had changed in ways he didn’t like. It went down a radical path to which Dick himself had opened the door, but didn’t want to pass through. By the time he turned 40, Dick felt that he was part of a different generation from the young activists who arose in the wake of Stonewall.
Generations theorists would agree with Dick. They’d call him a Silent Generation guy, while activist groups were led by young, upstart Boomers.
As for me, I recently turned 41. And I’m thinking through some of the same issues Dick worked through about a half century ago. When is it time to retire from activism? Is it time for me to do so? If so, what does that look like? Is there no place in activism for people over 40?
By the end of the 1980s, Reagan Republicans successfully turned ‘liberal’ into a dirty word. In their vision of America, liberals stand for the opposite of wholesome American values. In response, liberals ran away from the word. Those who won public office even dreaded having a photo taken next to the likes of Ted Kennedy.
Those days are long gone. Liberals, at least those who don’t live deep in GOP territory, embrace the term. If anything, more people attack the word ‘liberal’ from the left than from the right.
So, happy ending, right? We can call it a day?
Not exactly.
For some reason, socialists approach the fight over the ‘progressive’ label from the opposite end. As socialists, we keep calling ourselves progressives. We do so though the progressive label doesn’t fit and we’d be better off rejecting it.
Why?
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