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⬅️ Previous capture (2023-01-29)
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Again with the calendar/seasonal change, and all that brings with it in terms of reflecting on our lives and activity, I've been thinking of personal political activity, across the few general (broad/epic and.. important as such..) issues of: ecology/climate, production (or the mode there of, and social relations within), social political configurations (the 'how' of governance), and, in total immediacy, the consequences of these phenomena today: the treatment of populations seen as 'surplus' in the function of capital (including the incarcerated, and people more readily displaced and in flux by legacies of colonialism, poverty, and the effects of climate change being felt more in some parts of the world than others). This is stuff I think that's chewing through so many of our minds on an almost daily basis - and we can see through what social activity there is, how some responses to these are playing out in the world around us - protest, riot, campaigning, organising. The schoolkids' climate strikes of the last couple of years are a clear example of how much this kind of thinking is present among so many of us, particularly on the subject of the changing climate, which for many people can serve to dwarf over all else - as it seems to present so clearly an 'end of the road' for the status quo, and all the horror that we anticipate as the road meets the desert, meets the unknown, meets a more violent future..
Though I am here talking about experiences rooted broadly in the left wing/progressive, while it's also the case that the above factors are also generating (often more successful) state-aligned right wing and far-right mobilisations and developments. Developments that are upsetting to say the least, and I barely know how to begin thinking about countering that stuff (how do you change the mind that has wealth, to see that it's wealth is generated through exploitation and dispossession? How do you change the racist mind?).
Through my late 20s and early 30s most of my outside-of-work time (what is traditionally considered 'leisure time' for workers) was spent among anarchist types, squatters and other campaigners/organisers. At first through big protest movements that, on reflection, often offered very little material results (taking place in the city centre on a weekend meant there was often nothing too material to be able to disrupt/impact/affect). Though these type of city-centre actions aren't short of all benefits: you meet people, you develop your politics, collectively you determine useful prefigurative political forms (that is: social configuration trends becoming more popularly applied, e.g. being trans-inclusive, feminist-led, anti-racist), and you generate some media attention that hopes to reflect back to broader society that there is some sense of sentiment aligned with your cause. Though on the latter point, the output in media is often twisted and warped, leaving a frayed perspective at best.
After a couple of years of this kind of activity, alongside an extension of the prefigurative side of things with my personal political connections, I was also involved in a lot of independent media creation (e.g. zines/websites); trying to rejoin and popularise/drive theory and reflection within social movements and activity on-the-ground. And around this time most friends and comrades would often either get rooted in one or the other; theory or praxes, reading/writing/communicating or organising/disrupting/impacting. Though I think most of us would say there needs to be a useful balance - an interplay between theory and praxes. Deleuze puts this best:
"Practice is a set of relays from one theoretical point to another, and theory is a relay from one practice to another. No theory can develop without eventually encountering a wall, and practice is necessary for piercing this wall." - Giles Deleuze
Through community organising, campaigns, workplace organising, and some publishing/media-making, that's how I've spent the best part of the past 10-years now. And not all of it has been successful - but some certainly has. In the UK there's been a handful of campaigns that disparate groups and individuals have rallied around that have challenged and pushed back on certain policies, sometimes effectively. Though oftentimes the 'material results' of these efforts don't always tend to appear so much in the present, and we hope that they will bear fruit in the future. What certainly *has* appeared in the present is what I've mentioned before of the prefigurative aspect of left organising: that is, the *way* we compose ourselves collectively; our spaces, meetings, activities, etc. Facilitating broad inclusivity and accessibility whilst championing and centring marginalised voices. It's certainly not the case that this prefigurative side of things is everywhere on the left (certainly not the closer you get to the centre), and still requires work and attending to, but I would say there has been *some* success from what I've seen in improving this foundation in composition - and that's something I can see being driven forwards in subsequent flarings up of movements/activity.
But that's not enough. As material conditions worsen, this only serves to create opportunities for the far right and the centre to maintain the status quo, and a mode of production that is both unsustainable and the source of many of the factors mentioned above - at the least as an agitator of. Our composition alone can't be the answer - we have to make material wins, and those wins, in order to be understood, require a shared comprehension/analysis. And this is what I think is lacking at the moment. Broadly speaking, I think what we lack is a popular 'shared analysis' of the structures of our oppression, and of the structural root of the factors above. The left, from centre to the edges, is a disparate realm of half-formed theories and practices - and we lack an easy to grasp analytical common ground as a terrain or vantage to share. This is what I think needs work..
..and for the life of me, on that, I can't quite see where to begin.
So for now, some hope/optimism:
"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember the times and places – and there are so many – where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvellous victory." - Howard Zinn
~ flow