Base and Superstructure

Thoughts on production, alienation, and ideology

Category: Activism (Page 2 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.

A picture of a child holding a candle with Time to Re-tire as the headline.

When is it Time to Retire from Activism?

September 23, 2024 / / 0 Comments

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?

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A photo of Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown. Intended to represent socialists who chase the 'progressive' label.

Why Do Socialists Fight Over the ‘Progressive’ Label?

September 9, 2024 / / 0 Comments

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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A portrait of philosopher George Berkeley, intended to represent the left's linguistic idealism.

The Left’s Linguistic Idealism

September 2, 2024 / / 0 Comments

The contemporary left repeatedly tries to solve all the world’s problems through linguistic idealism. It’s one of the more discouraging aspects of left politics today. And almost anyone with organizing experience born before 1985 knows we can’t ‘language’ our way to a socialist world.

In the DSA, for instance, we see repeated appeals to the ‘multiracial working class‘ as a target base. And in activist spaces across the progressive and left worlds, we see pronoun introductions and attempts to get people’s pronouns right as an end in itself, rather than a means to open up further work.

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with either of these things, in the abstract. We should target a working class across base racial lines. And, of course, we should get people’s pronouns right. These count as very basic background things we should do.

However, the left adopts a bizarre sort of linguistic idealism by treating these things as an end, rather than as a means. We slide into the idea that by getting the language right, we magically also fix the world.

But you don’t build a multiracial working class base just by saying you’re doing it. You build it by getting out into communities, talking with people, and inviting them to join you.

And that’s where most activists just haven’t succeeded.

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An image of two members of DSA having a discussion in front of protest signs.

Is DSA a Sectarian Org?

August 26, 2024 / / 0 Comments

In my last couple of posts, I charted out some of the deep tensions within DSA. I charted some of its issues with post-pandemic social anxiety and psychological safety a couple of weeks ago. And then last week, I analyzed its position with respect to progressive activism.

In that post, I presented DSA as an org for activists and enthusiasts rather than for a working-class base. And in that regard, DSA looks more like one node in a broader progressive activist network rather than a grassroots working-class movement.

But some people within DSA argue that the org is descending into a sectarian one. I took up this question a couple of years ago, where I denied this view.

But since the election of a new NPC that contains multiple democratic centralist factions, have things changed?

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A poster with the headline The Working Class Takes the Wheel, with a UPS truck under it promoting unionization.

Is DSA a Working-Class Org?

August 19, 2024 /

DSA is an org that professes to organize the ‘multiracial working class.’ It presents itself as a site for the building of working-class power across lines of race, gender, sexuality, and other identity categories. Indeed, these things allegedly set DSA apart both from the sectarian left and the progressive NGO space.

The trouble is that just about everyone to the left of Joe Biden tells some version of that story. It seems like they all love the ‘multiracial working class’ now. This complicates how DSA uses this story to set itself apart.

At the end of the day, I think we can separate DSA from the sectarian left. I’ll say a bit more about that in a future post. For this one, I’ll point out that DSA’s use of the magic phrase looks the same to me as the one we find in the progressive NGO space.

Read on to find out why.

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