A few months ago, I wrote an article summarising my experiences in the base building milieu and trying to understand why we had reached an apparent roadblock. I ended on quite a pessimistic note, but promised that was the first part of an ongoing series. Unfortunately, I have been having trouble knowing where to take the series and writing the promised follow up. It is much easier to spot a problem than to suggest a solution. And the quagmire the left seems to be stuck in seems much easier to state than to find a way to escape. So I was left in a bit of an impasse. I am still trying to think and think hard about how to get out of here. But I offer this short letter in hopes that people understand what mental blocks I’ve been facing, and in the hope someone can help me (us) figure a way out, rather than trying to put a detailed article forward with a mishmash of poorly thought out ideas that will be diluted in the ocean of information and will be rendered meaningless.
The two propositions I am currently wrestling with are these two theses, which seem to me to be very true and hint at the way we should be taking.
- In a mediatized world, all politics of liberation must take a mediatized form.
This seems to be the problem I repeatedly hit with base building. We were trying to operate on the base, in a very un-mediated way. On the contrary, our rivals, which control the media and control many other spheres, can mobilise and organise at much larger scales than we can. We are really in an unfair terrain: they can pour money into media projects to recapture rebellious energy in right-wing manners (c.f. Peter Thiel), while we are stuck knocking on doors. They reach millions while we’re lucky if we get to the thousands.
The only place where I could see this impasse being briefly broken was the Bernie presidential run, which I mentioned: “Without falling into reformism and thinking that Bernie would save us, it is still worth reflecting on why working-class people relate to U.S. politics through the ballot primarily, and how we both use that and expand on it”. This was the meaning of this sentence- which some people read as a plea for the ballot box. Rather than that, it was a plea to understand why only a presidential primary has given us the ability to bring people to our side on a relatively level playing field. The George Floyd protests also gave us access to mass media, but the legacy of those protests is (for now) much worse than the Sanders runs- and has been far more recaptured by the system.
I must mention that some leftist streamers achieve large audiences. But they have largely reformist and/or self-serving politics. As I wrote earlier with Amelia Davenport, “what is the social industry, or even social media, strategy of our organising?”. It seems to me that this question still needs answering, and this is more urgent than ever.
2. One cannot decouple the problem of motivating the masses from the problem of writing a political program.
I think this is a problem that is touched upon but not really recognized deeply. Yes, of course we want a program that speaks to the masses, but it seems that we kind of know what the masses demand and/or have a good idea of what is the minimum program to get to socialism, and we just have to motivate them enough to get them to be reliable fighters on our side. Some theories of how to make this happen are around, most famously the Trotskist transitional program which intends to place demands the capitalists cannot satisfy and once they´re not satisfied the masses will become revolutionaries. But this doesn’t work. Other tendencies barely have answers beyond “strategies of patience” or “going to the masses”, this failure is quite universal. I am personally responsible for thinking in the past that we just need a good story and a recourse to the past. Nowadays, I look at that essay with a mixture of shame and pride- some things I wrote were right, others are very wrong.
This problem is somehow related to the problem of culture, but it cannot be reduced to this. Culture is a battlefield, but it is again a mediator, a superstructure. What makes present day communism less fun or enjoyable than past communisms is deeper than culture. In this I think we should borrow a page from psychoanalysis: indeed thesis two is pretty much lifted from Zizek’s In Defense of Lost Causes. However Zizek, like many others respond to this by either critiquing culture and becoming unintelligible cultural commentators sprinkled with politics that are left-liberal at best or reactionary at worst. Meanwhile, the reason for critique is lost, drowning in deep academic speak. Adorno is remembered by obtuse writing and by his hatred of jazz, for example, rather than by his theory of culture. Left psychoanalysis has become a world of its own, with its own vocabulary, and its practitioners just forget to return to the real world and give us a hand here instead discussing endlessly four or five prototypical cases.
In this aspect, I find the podcast Why Theory by Todd McGowan and Ryan Engley refreshing, because despite their liberal politics and thinking AOC is the solution, they seem to use psychoanalysis to return to the real world. They point the finger at something tangible: leftist politics is not enjoyable, liberals like to flagellate themselves and derive enjoyment from that, and far-right populism in many ways is actually enjoyable for those caught up in it. While Todd and Ryan do not have the political answers, they are screaming at the left something fundamental: make your politics enjoyable for everyone. Inflate giant union rats. Pick an enemy and make fun of them. And much more. Most “left populists” are charismatic figures in one way or another, and they make their politics appealing by their own character.
I could also wager that the lack of enjoyment in deep left politics is why we end up doing two things you can actually derive enjoyment from: go on Twitter to berate other leftists to feel a bit better about ourselves, and drown in bibliographies of thousands of books where we can reminisce about our heroes and dream to be them. These activities are way more enjoyable than going around in circles chasing spreadsheet contacts. Yes, when we win it feels great, but we don’t win very often. Meanwhile all we’re left with is the grind which can become a sort of identity in itself. Solutions like alternative cultures are hinting at something but I’m not sure we can achieve them with our means.
These are just a bunch of thoughts, which I hope get some discussion. I wish to find a way out as much as anyone else. To that, we have to add that it will not be easy in the Global North. After Syriza, Brexit and Trumpism the left has been reduced to defenders of the system. This is the post-2016 challenge: we can only make the collapse slower because any significant challenge actually risks the relatively-comfortable livelihood of many. This is why we end up with slogans like “another world/EU is possible”: a recognition that we still need things like the EU to keep the majority of people above the subsistence line. But this is a topic for further elaboration…
Renato Flores
