A New Look at the Left Wing

The Impatient Revolutionaries

These are a few of what I recognize as problems in contemporary radicalism, be it left or “post-left.”

1. The refusal of objectivity - some strains of contemporary identity politics, by tying truth to who people are instead of what they say, put themselves in a position that stands in the way of constructive social dialogue. I’ve seen a considerable number of robust and substantial critiques of problems in contemporary social relations (be they economic, gender, racial or otherwise)- I have yet to see a solution or positive alternative as compelling. This inability to offer a coherent vision for change is a serious shortcoming. Overcoming it necessarily requires objective language, free from the influence of power relations, which many contemporary theorists wrongly believe to be impossible. Instead of attempting to reclaim notions of justice for everyone, of collectively building a better world, the abandonment of universal ideas entails struggle between different groups’ competing conceptions of justice, right, etc.- an approach that seems to preclude egalitarianism from the outset.
2. Rejecting organizing and hostility towards democracy - the idea that a small group can spark some kind of spontaneous insurrection against a force as global and entrenched as capital is reckless and ineffectual. If people frustrated with the present state of their lives and society aren’t reached by an organized egalitarian group, right-wing reaction is just as likely (if not more) as left-wing revolution in capitalism’s times of crisis. The rejection of formal organizations does a disservice to all those currently out there doing the thankless work of reaching people and building networks. Capitalism wasn’t created overnight, and our alternative cannot be either.
3. The so-called “rejection of ideology” and abandonment of ethics. By abandoning ethics you lose one of the most powerful tools for critiquing capitalism, racism, and patriarchy. It’s very telling that one of the most influential of the post-left anarchy journals is subtitled “a journal of desire armed.” Of course, when somebody considers themselves to be “non-ideological,” we should be alerted immediately to the functioning of ideology (after all, the post-left anarchists are guided by a desire and a method for emancipation). Beyond that, however, I see this goal of emancipating desire as an extension what Harvey identifies as the “aestheticization of politics” in contemporary critical thought. Replacing an ethic of egalitarianism with an aesthetic of desire makes our politics shallow and problematic. As an example, the problem of how we are to mediate between the desires of different people and the needs of the local ecology is nearly impossible to solve without a coherent frame of ethics.

The common thread between all of these, I believe, is the true problem among all of us radicals - we’ve become too good at talking about what we oppose. Whether it’s power relations embedded in language like Foucault, critiques of the shortcomings of social democracy, a rejection of bourgeois ethics, or anything else, these critiques (however important) only take us so far. We’re anti-capitalists, anti-racists, anti-sexists, etc- but unless we offer something else we can only ever react to what we’re against. We need to start talking about what we support, the society we want to build, the social relations we want to have. Right now, too many people want to bypass that conversation and the organizing that goes with it and skip right to the idealized “after the revolution…” phase. We can’t make excuses for ourselves either- telling ourselves we’re not smart or educated enough, we don’t know enough theory, we can’t see outside our privilege- as true egalitarianism depends on the ability of everyone to participate in the conversation.