Alienation, autonomy, 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.
So, here’s one of the biggest challenges on the left that I’ve been thinking about lately. We start with the core of a good idea. The idea even works well in specific situations. But then we turn that idea into some kind of Iron Law, trying to apply it way beyond its limits. The result? It doesn’t work so well any longer! I think we see this problem a lot with appeals to the notion of ‘lived experience.’
What’s going on here? What’s wrong with the appeal to lived experience?
U.S. politics move through familiar cycles. Here’s one of them: A mass shooter kills lots of people, most (or all) of them children. Media attention and public outrage follow. Many in the GOP dismiss the incident, blaming mental health and framing Democrats as opponents of gun rights. Democrats use the incident to push their usual set of ‘gun control’ solutions to gun violence – background checks, assault weapon bans, and targeted limits on who can own guns (e.g., red flag laws).
The Uvalde shooting at Robb Elementary School, of course, serves merely as the most recent example of this cycle.
‘Radlib’? What’s that?
Let’s start here. Leftists turn to insults and name calling every now and then. And we have no shortage of names to call the people who disagree with us. We can (and do) call them ‘liberal.’ For the edgier among them, we can call them ‘ultra-liberal‘ (or even ‘ultra-left‘ if they’re leftists we don’t like). Or if we’re just feeling like pouring gas on a fire, we can use ‘shitlib.’
But I’m interested in ‘radlib.’ Let’s take a look at it. What might be compelling about it? Can it do any work those other terms can’t?
I subscribe to a few leftist magazines. One of them – Catalyst – has published a few contributions to a debate over the status of Lean production. Not long ago, I read the most recent article in that debate: one by the title ‘The Politics of Lean Production‘ by Matt Vidal.
The debate itself concerns both the theory and economics of Lean. Is Lean a bad thing by its very nature? Or, on the other hand, do we have ways we can redirect it for the benefit of the left? Vidal reads his opponents as arguing for the former, while he argues for the latter. And while Vidal doesn’t really want to go there, no less than Lenin himself once tried to re-capture something a bit like Lean.
Let’s take a look at this debate.
I’ve posted a few times on Jane McAlevey’s book No Shortcuts. Readers looking to catch up can read the most important of those posts here and here. But I find one other big lesson that McAlevey gives to us. That concerns the limit of mobilizing as a method and basis for an org.
Let’s explore that a bit.
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