I've been around the far left for over 10 years. While I've spent time as an activist, and I go to demonstrations regularly, I've avoided being an organizer.

Part of this is simple fatigue. Coming out of a student milieu, I found the transition to full-time work jarring and a little overwhelming, for much the same reasons as the TSR clerk did (see last post.) I had very little energy left over for activism after a day's work.

Another reason is 'the period', as we call it. I found radical politics when radicalism was at a low ebb, after the break-up of the USSR and the disorientation that caused, and before the global justice movement. It was very hard to be an activist when our side kept losing.

This gave me some perspective - I didn't give up on radicalism after the post-9/11 attack on the global justice movement, for example. But it also made me cautious of getting too involved. It's impossible not to get emotionally invested in a campaign, and feel personally affected when campaigns don't succeed. The ebb of the movement made it hard to stay motivated.

Worm of book, second go

My solution was to read. I'm not a prodigious reader, but it seemed sensible that other leftists faced similar problems. How did they survive persecution, infighting and apathy and hold to a vision of social transformation?

This proved to be very helpful. Not only have other leftists grappled with what to do in a 'downturn', their very existence shows that the course of human society (what becomes history) changes, rapidly & drastically, in different places & times. A leftist despairs when s/he thinks, "Nothing's ever going to change". But people have fought to change the world in innumerable ways; we're lucky enough to live in a time of cheap, accessible mass media that can disseminate some of those struggles, if you dig deep enough.

Authors that give me hope

I discovered Victor Serge, my blog-namesake, this way: a French/Russian revolutionary who was an anarchist, a Bolshevik and a member of the Left Opposition, friendly with (though never a follower of) Trotsky. He suffered persecution, exile and attempted murder-by-Gulag, but for nearly all his life he remained a Marxist. Albert Camus, in his early writings, grappled with a humanist (some would say idealist) revolutionary vision. And others as well; I'd recommend Mark Steele's Reason's to be Cheerful for what it's like being an activist in bad times.



I also found reading theory to be very helpful. I should qualify that; I'm not a well-versed Marxist. I haven't read all the classics. I think dialectics are important but I couldn't argue why. I'm going back to school soon, but I often feel like I'm fumbling in the dark with weighty questions: base & superstructure, ideology, science, etc.

But I really enjoyed Trotsky's Literature & Revolution, Bertoll Ollman's Alienation: The Condition of Man in Capitalist Society and David Harvey's The Condition of Postmodernity. It just makes sense that, when I'm confronted with an apparently unsolvable problem (e.g. why are the mass of people passive?), rather than accepting the pat answer (they're greedy, stupid, etc.) or just giving up, that I read what other people have written. And often, it makes sense (e.g. are not passive, but they express their rebellion in a range of ways, from slacking off at work to anti-social behaviour.) At the very least, it makes me want to learn more.

Everybody look what's going down

This is not the established way of maintaining leftist politics, and it has serious shortcomings. Not being a regular activist means you don't meet other activists, so you feel freakish for having views so far outside the mainstream. You lose the wonderful feeling of being together in a common cause. Your understanding of issues becomes abstract and rigid, because there's no real-life experience to test your view against.

However, these problems aren't exclusive to non-activists. In fact, they're endemic to the left as a whole, and they're one of the reasons I've found it hard to get involved. Individual leftists, an organized group, or even a political subculture face the same pressures to 'uphold the truth' in the face of resistance. This can lead to dogmatism, best illustrated by the following hypothetical arguments:

Inevitable conclusion-ism

Commie #1: I believe the Iraqi resistance is a popular resistance.

Commie #2: I believe much of it is fundamentalist, lacking broad support.

Commie #1: But they're opposing the Americans, who are imperialist. If you don't support them, you're imperialist too. That means you're not a Communist.

Commie #2: No, it means we disagree how how to fight imperialism.

Commie #1: No, it means you love capitalism because you refuse to fight it properly! You've crossed sides! Traitor!

Commie #2: (flushes with shame)

Impossiblism

Commie (on soapbox): The cops are racist, violent bastards! Down with the police!

Curious bystander: But - don't the cops protect us?

Commie: If you think that, then the cops must protect you! Which means you're middle class/liberal/bourgeois/poorly colour-coordinated etc!

Curious bystander: No, really, I want to understand. The cops have never beaten me up, so why should I hate them?

Commie: Because they're the armed wing of the state!

Curious bystander: What does that mean?

Commie: They beat up people of colour! They break picket lines!

Curious bystander: But according to the news I read every day, and the common sense of most people, society would descend into chaos without the police.

Commie: You watch the news? How dare you have ideas that 95% of the population shares except at key historical moments? What kind of a reactionary are you?

Curious bystander: Uh, what's a reactionary?



How not to talk to people

Instead of engaging the real world around them, frightened leftists circle the wagons. If they meet someone who doesn't understand or agree with their ideas, they write that person off, rather than trying to convince them. It's a small step to condemning entire institutions - the media, the school system, the family - outright.

At this point any liberals reading are nodding vociferously, thinking, "That's why the far left is crazy! They try to condemn the system, rather than seeing its good & bad points, and trying to achieve what they can." You might think this from the vehemence some sects (communist & anarchist) denounce the 'outside world'.

However, this is not what I'm saying.

Capitalism is a contradictory phenomenon. It creates & destroys at the same time. It makes a regimented school system to train future workers for dull, soulless jobs. But it hires people who sometimes teach kids to think creatively. The nuclear family under capitalism is the seat of domestic violence and queer oppression. It's also a necessary unit of economic and emotional survival for most people. It contains the seeds of its reproduction, and its destruction.

In short, it's dialectical.

Defending or condemning social institutions - what I see as the liberal/sectarian divide - misses the point. You have to explain them. Only when you understand their role in capitalist society, can you see what they do for people - why people depend on them, why those in power use them. In Marxist parlance, this is called a historical materialist analysis. Take your social phenomenon, understand its complexity, and only then can you condemn it for its anti-human, anti-social effects.

Stupid white males

Let's talk specifics. And, just to show I'm still on the right side, I'll use a liberal example. Howard Dean condemned the Republicans as a "white, Christian" party. What does this mean to those who hear it?



For the last 25 years, the U.S. right-wing has hammered home a central message: if things are going wrong, it's because the non-white, non-Christians are to blame. Ghettos, affirmative action, Muslims, Mexicans - they become this stand-in bogeyman for all social ills. To me, white & Christian means conservative. To a white, Christian worker, it's their identity - an identity the Republicans have capitalised on. Now, all the progressive things Howard Dean stands for (not much, but bear with me) are lost, because the right can say "Those damn hippie cappucinno leftists are attacking you again. You're the enemy in their eyes. Luckily your guy's in the White House to protect you."

The fact is, even white workers get screwed by the system. If they're conservative, it's not because they're lazy; it's because the left got lazy, and started name-calling entire sociological categories rather than patiently explaining why the system is wrong. Objectively, white workers have more in common with Mexican workers than they do with George W. Bush (or Howard Dean, for that matter.) But Dean's comments will drive them right into the waiting arms of their masters.

That's one example. But there are many. Trade unionists, cops, priests - groups that need to be understood, instead are lumped into categories ("fat, white, male") that do more to obscure than explain.

This may sound like a contradiction. I'm a Marxist, and I don't trust cops at all. I think priests are fantasy peddlers at best. I'm all for drawing strong political conclusions, and sticking to them. But if you don't explain how you reach those conclusions, and you don't figure out what those categories mean to people, then you haven't explained anything at all. You've just got their backs up.

Which, in conclusion, is what I think the left does regularly. That's why I read: to discover how the left has made it through tough times without devolving into sectarianism - or when it has become sectarian, and what the consequences were. It's why, when I do get back into activism, I'm going to try my hardest to learn about the issues, explain things patiently and not condemn others for the ignorance they've grown up with.

Two quotes: Marx said,

Men make their own history, but they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves.

And from Lenin:

Every man [sic] must rely on himself. Yet he should also listen to what informed people have to say. I don't know how radical you are, or how radical I am. I am certainly not radical enough. One can never be radical enough; that is, one must always try to be as radical as reality itself.

No matter how racist, sexist or just plain ignorant people are, you can't give up on them, because they have the potential to hate the system, if they're drawn into struggle against it. This means connecting with the ideas they have, rather than telling them yours, and being shocked when they don't get it.

Two caveats:

#1. This doesn't apply to one's personal life.

#2. A blog is not the best way to do this.



You cannot trust this boy. His mind has been corrupted by colours, sounds and shapes!"

Edward, proprietor of the Local Shop, League of Gentlemen