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.
I haven’t had many encounters with the police over the years. Most of those encounters involve getting fined for petty driving violations. This probably lines up with the experience of most readers.
But my most recent encounter – from a year or two ago – highlights a few things for me. It shows, I think, the dangers inherent in any contact with police officers on duty. Even when nothing outrageously bad results from it.
Sociologists Michael McCarthy and Mathieu Hikaru Desan recently sketched out their response to the class reductionism debate. Their approach lines up rather nicely with the one I took in a post and article. But they also make conceptual space for views I think we can see floating around in various forms. I want to take a look at one such view: class constructivism.
I’ll start by saying a word about how McCarthy and Desan lay out the conceptual space. And then I’ll move on to sketch out class constructivism. While few views completely fit into the class constructivism camp, I think we can find appeals to something like it within common perspectives in both DSA and the broader left.
If nothing else, we know DSA has lots of internal faction fights and rivalries. Many of these are expressed through the caucus system, which I’ve written about a number of times.
But we see another rivalry between more national-focused, centralizing factions and rival views those factions often call ‘anarchism.’ I use quotes for ‘anarchism’ because the view they discuss doesn’t appear, at least to me, to trace all that well to any historical or contemporary anarchist views. It seems to me more of a shorthand for a ‘let’s not do anything’ view.
To get a bit more specific, I think lots of people in DSA see a kind of anti-politics that comes from the anti-globalization movement of the late 1990s and early 2000s. And they see a strain of the same kind of politics coming from Occupy Wall Street and related movements. We can trace critique of that to Jacobin and, even earlier, to its founder, Bhaskar Sunkara. See, for example, this article and this response to it.
Let’s briefly address these issues. What’s going on here?
Podcaster, author, and philosopher Ben Burgis recently published a short series of essays called Canceling Comedians While The World Burns. In this body of work, Burgis positions himself as a critic of certain tendencies on the left. But he critiques these tendencies from a strategic, (genuinely) sympathetic, and constructive perspective.
I think that’s a good idea. In fact, I try to do it myself from time to time. And not just because I’m also a philosopher and we like that sort of thing. Though I am also a philosopher, and we do like that sort of thing. Rather, because it’s a practical, useful skill for the left. We should think more deeply about strategy. And we should think about how our choices and public presentation affect how and whether we recruit new members, appeal to target audiences, and achieve results.
Burgis writes Canceling Comedians While The World Burns with these things in mind, and I’ll keep them in mind in discussing his book.
I know, I know. I’ve been writing a lot about DSA lately. But the 2023 DSA Convention draws near. And after writing about broader issues of DSA strategy, I wanted to say a word about the Convention proposals.
As I’m sure many readers know, we have lots of them still in play. Rather than try to address all of them, I’ll focus on ones I clearly support or oppose. To narrow things down a bit further, I’ll focus mostly on Resolutions rather than Constitutional or Bylaws Amendments. I’ll provide brief arguments for where I stand on each proposal I discuss, though readers should certainly reach out if they’d like more detail.
And, of course, comments always welcome!
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