Base and Superstructure

Alienation, autonomy, and ideology

Category: Activism (Page 11 of 29)

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.

ultra-progressivism

Socialism Isn’t Ultra-Progressivism

January 9, 2023 /

Most politicians who win office and identify as socialists place their politics – and, by extension, socialism – under the umbrella of progressivism. So do some of the rank and file members of socialist orgs. But many others point out that progressivism and socialism grew out of much different traditions. We notably see this division in the DSA, which includes lots and lots of younger, newer leftists.

Even though many people see the division, few acknowledge it. This lack of acknowledgment allows an unhealthy situation to develop. We see far more acrimonious debate and ill-will due to this situation than an org like DSA can sustain. Were the two sides to make their assumptions explicit, they could engage more productively with each other.

But all this leads to a natural question: are the DSA politicians (and their followers) correct? Is socialism just some stronger flavor of progressivism? Or is it something else?

I’ll argue in this post that socialism and ultra-progressivism are different. Socialism isn’t just a more extreme form of progressive views. But while I’ll spend some time showing the differences between socialism and ultra-progressivism, I’ll point out that the goal is to help discussions proceed without all this ill-will.

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Tío Bernie: Interests or Relationships?

October 10, 2022 /

Tío Bernie

I want to start with two competing visions for how to put together a leftist electoral coalition. The first one says you put together a multiracial working-class coalition by laying out policies in people’s interest and then advertising those policies. The second says you start by connecting with people on their own terms and by using prior relationships to build personal ties with the candidate and campaign.

The second works better than the first. Or at least Chuck Rocha argues as much in his book, Tío Bernie, about his work with Latinx and immigrant voters on the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign.

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A Third Limit of ‘Impact Over Intent’

September 29, 2022 /

Earlier this week, I wrote a post laying out two limits to the phrase ‘impact over intent.’ In short, people tend to use the phrase ironically to subvert the very reasons activists invented it in the first place. To that list, I’d like to briefly add a third limit.

What’s the third limit? In short, people simply discard the phrase when they find it inconvenient.

When a person an activist doesn’t like deflects from the impact of something they’ve said or done by appealing to their intentions, the activist will point this out and use it against them. But when someone they do like pulls the same move, they’ll join with them and defend the behavior.

And so, hardly anyone applies ‘impact over intent’ consistently.

impact over intent

The Limits of ‘Impact Over Intent’

September 26, 2022 /

The phrase ‘impact over intent‘ gets lots of play in social justice circles. And for good reason. It helps us direct our attention away from the psychology of individuals and toward problems of sexism or racism out in the world. And since social justice groups – at least good social justice groups – want to fight sexism, racism, et al. in the world and not just in the head, they use ‘impact over intent’ as a part of their mission.

However, the phrase really only purports to do this. In something of an irony, the impact of ‘impact over intent’ often fails to live up to its lofty intentions.

And that’s the topic of this post. In the past, I’ve written about the limits of everything from universal design to lived experience to mobilizing. Let’s shift our attention to ‘impact over intent.’

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means-testing left

Means-Testing and the Left

September 19, 2022 /

Leftists hate means-testing. If we’ve learned nothing else from listening to leftists talk about policy in the last 5 or 6 years, it’s that. They heap scorn upon it. They claim to avoid it when they work on their own advocacy and mutual aid projects. And they criticize politicians who put it into programs, especially liberal Democrats.

But I think the term ‘means-testing’ carries a lot of ambiguity. Leftists, in particular, tend to use the term interchangeably with ‘paperwork.’ That is to say, they seem to think applying a means test amounts to requiring people to submit (often extensive) paperwork proving they have a low income and thereby ‘deserve’ support.

Let’s talk about that.

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