Alienation, autonomy, and ideology
Cedric Johnson dropped After Black Lives Matter into an ongoing debate between a ‘woke’ and ‘anti-woke’ left. It’s an older debate, but one running hot in the last few years. Unlike many other authors, Johnson tries, at least in some ways, to work around and between the two camps.
Not that he always succeeds. And it’s pretty clear which side he prefers (the ‘anti-woke’ side). But I think he wrote After Black Lives Matter in an effort to move the debate forward.
Let’s take a look.
As the 2023 DSA Convention approaches, let’s try to answer a strategic question. The question concerns a big picture issue, one that I think people tend to lose in the details of the various Resolutions on display.
So, let’s talk broad, national strategy. I have in mind DSA’s ‘decision’ – quotes because it’s perhaps more a starting point than a decision – to run priority campaigns around issues rather than people. DSA builds its recruitment model on attracting people to issues like Medicare for All rather than reaching out to members of target classes and building campaigns around their ideas. An org can do both, of course. But DSA probably doesn’t have the resources to do both well. And, at present, it only does the former.
I’ll argue in this post that DSA should run grassroots organizing campaigns built around classes first, rather than issues.
Way back in 2018, I wrote a short post explaining the U.S. holiday ‘Labor Day,’ focusing on its differences from the international holiday May Day. Among other things, I posted out to readers that both holidays originated in the United States! Before, of course, the U.S. decided to eff things up and try to stamp out May Day.
Which it failed to do. Sort of. I’ll refer readers to the Labor Day post I linked above for the full details. But, suffice it to say, the U.S. government – with a notable helping hand from right-leaning, anti-communist unions – played its part in the stifling of a workers’ tradition that started in our own country.
It’s a bummer. But it does teach us the lesson that we of the left have started deep traditions before. We can do it again.
Leftists talk a great deal about the term ‘working class.’ I even included it in my blog lexicon! In this post, I want to say a word about two terms related to all that – ‘proletarian’ and ‘worker.’ I think those terms reveal a great deal about the working class politics of the left.
I won’t exactly define those two terms in this post. But I will take some steps toward defining them. In particular, I’ll argue against using the terms interchangeably. Instead, I’ll suggest thinking about ‘proletarian’ as a subset of ‘worker.’ In doing so, I think we find new insights.
I focus a great deal on the corporate world in this blog, notably on the special brand of ennui that cuts through that world. Given my focus in past posts on the need to organize workers in white collar industries, you might think I recommend the David Graeber book Bullshit Jobs whenever I get the chance. After all, it’s the best known popular critique of leadership and fluff in corporate land. It especially aims at pointless and/or socially negative elements, such as HR leaders, PR types, and lobbyists.
But you’d be wrong.
As I’ve mentioned before, Graeber’s best work is The Utopia of Rules. Recently, Matteo Tiratelli published an article in Catalyst that goes a long way toward explaining why. He effectively criticizes Graeber’s notion of ‘bullshit jobs‘ and points toward a better alternative.
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