Radical activists often debate reform versus revolution.
Seek a liberated future but work in a limiting present. Some day, full transformation. Today modest changes.
A question arises: how do we conduct activism seeking limited gains and given the personalities and means we have, yet in ways that lead toward transformation?
We seek reforms but we reject reformism. We understand our context but we develop a future vision we can refine as we proceed. We fight for changes now but in ways that galvanize sufficient support to win more changes tomorrow. We respect the present’s limitations but chart a trajectory leading where we wish to go. We win gains that matter, while we prepare to win more gains, without pause, until we attain a new world.
Since we want economy beyond capitalism, kinship beyond patriarchy, polity beyond bureaucratic perversity, community beyond racism, and sustainability and peace beyond suicidal nightmare – we organize to win limited gains now but in ways that develop steadily more comprehension of, desire for, commitment toward, and means suited to winning still greater gains later.
How is this self evident stance being caught between a rock and a hard place?
The rock is reformism. If our words and actions imply the permanence of basic institutions they will ensure just that outcome. Tilting toward reformism, our ultimate aims will dissipate into a miasma of suicidal compromise.
The hard place is “we want the world and we want it now.” Echoing off surrounding skyscraper facades, the chant sounds inspiring, but as a core thought, it leads one to think reforms are for wimps and sell outs. Tilting toward what some call “ultra leftism,” our prospects will dissipate into the miasma of holier than thou posturing.
Too much concern for respecting and abiding the contours of the present precludes escaping the present. We must be bold. Too much concern for reaching the contours of a desired future precludes gaining a foothold to take a positive step. We must not lose connection with reality.
The solution? Take manageable immediate steps always conceived and implemented consistent with reaching the future.
Take one example. Suppose you seek an increase in the minimum wage.
The usual way is to say we want, we deserve, $15 an hour. All in the struggle think the end is the new minimum wage. That will be just. Win it and go home. While organizing, we will create ties, connections, and means to exercise pressure to raise sufficient costs and fears for authorities that they will relent rather than risking greater losses. But we will do it without any notion of persisting after winning, without connection to longer term aims and vision, without connection to other aspects of a full program.
A second way to approach the situation is to not fight for such a demand at all. Folks with this view claim such a demand ratifies the powers that be. It fails to seek a new world. With this view folks may take to the streets, courageous and committed, but their demand is to have “the world, now” – and nothing lasting is learned or built, much less won.
A different way than reformism or than abstaining from the minimum wage demand entirely, is to seek the $15 an hour but to simultaneously convey a larger conception of what is just, worthy, and warranted consistent with one’s ultimate aims – which aims might be, for example, that people should receive income for how long they work, for how hard they work, and for the onerousness of the conditions under which they work. In this third approach, the movement seeks $15 an hour as a worthy advance and also a step toward fully equitable remuneration. The approach builds ties, connections, and means to exercise pressure that can win now, but that also links with and facilitates additional on-going campaigns.
These contrasting approaches exist for almost any campaign one might initiate. You can either seek a gain to go home and celebrate its attainment, which tilts toward reformism. Or you can forego even seeking the immediate limited gain, on grounds it isn’t all you want, which tilts toward “ultra leftism.” Or you can seek the gain to celebrate the very meaningful advance, but also to prepare to seek much more, moving further forward.
There is a related situation, less well discussed then the need to avoid reformism and ultra leftism, for which pretty much the same thinking, albeit often in more contextually complex conditions, typically applies.
Consider trying to set up a new institution meant to embody the values of a desired future while it serves various purposes and needs in the present. A new but closely related rock and hard place arise.
On the one hand, you want the new project to embody new values, aims, and structures, and even to have features consistent with and able to melt into a better future.
On the other hand, the new project has to work in the present, with current people, resources, and sources of support.
Too much fealty to the ideal goal and you might be true to your desires but fail completely due to not succeeding in existing circumstances. Too much attention to fitting the constraints of present circumstances and you might build a lasting project which has, however, so lost touch with the ideal goal that its successful establishment is undercut by its failure to be sufficiently new and different to plant the seeds of the future in the present.
By way of example, consider the media project called First Look, including The Intercept as its first operational component.
The stated aim has been broadly two fold – 1. to provide needed news and analysis and 2. to develop new institutional relations defining and sustaining a new kind of journalism. On both counts the project would hopefully plant the seeds of the future in the present, including enhancing the amount and quality of needed news by virtue of the benefits of having a more amenable venue for it.
How might people – such as Poitras, Greenwald, Scahill, and Omidyar – those who were initially involved – do all this?
First they would have some unavoidable realities. They would have to employ people who are used to working in and have habits and expectations molded in the present. Likewise, they would have to pay bills. For example, those involved would need income for their labors and other expenses would have to be met as well such as rent, equipment, fees for services, research costs, and so on.
Questions arise. Where will funds come from? How will relations among people involved in the project be structured, such as with what division of labor and with what mode of making decisions? Likewise, how will the new institution interface with other media organizations already existing and with other types of institutions as well, not least, say, the government?
For each choice that arises the general quandary is how does one navigate between: 1. the need to establish the institution and keep it functioning at a sufficient scale to accomplish more than the (in this case) the associated writers would accomplish if they were dispersed among other existing institutions, such as those they already had jobs at before embarking on this project, and, 2. the need to have the project take shape and operate consistently with its longer term aims, rather than the project persisting but losing its identity and thus its merit, in the process?
This conundrum should be very familiar to anyone who has created new institutions and worked at them. It defines many hard choices whose resolution depends greatly on views of what the implications of the choices are likely to be.
So, take for example starting Intercept (or, if you prefer, teleSUR English or Z Communications, etc.) As a first decision to consider, should one take advertisements, or not? The argument for doing so is simple. One needs funds with which to pay bills. The argument against doing so depends, however, on how one sees the situation. One might feel that ads are bad because they have bad content, only. In that case, one might think, well, we shouldn’t advertise cigarettes, say, but surely it will be fine to advertise good books, or even just books generally. We should do what is not immediately horrible in what it is directly communicating, and what won’t corrupt our thinking and lead, via a slippery slope, to undercutting our virtues even as it pays the bills. A different analysis might say, wait, advertisements are intrinsically bad. They ratify the idea of deception. They sell the attention of users to corporations. Your audience becomes your product while content is reduced to a mere means of attracting that audience – and not just any audience, but one with means to buy the commodities advertised. The ads one chooses may for a time seem to seek to sell only nice items, but what is really happening is selling the media audience to the corporations buying ads, and, in so doing, it compromises the whole media project.
Such a discussion is always in some context. What about other means for income? Taking donations from users entails asking for them, which can undercut outreach and feel degrading. On the other hand, if you can keep that debit to a minimum, user donations as a funding mechanism has the virtue of allowing self sufficiency and of raising pressures on the media project to meet audience needs rather than to sell audience attention and information to companies. But what is audience just won’t donate sufficiently?
What about taking funds from large money donors, whether foundations or individuals? On the plus side, this can generate large chunks of cash, facilitating many useful endeavors. As its downside, however, this can generate dependence on sources who may impose, implicitly or explicitly, constraints on content. Nice values are acceptable, but don’t go too far or you will lose our support. This need not be explicit to be powerfully damaging.
Considering First Look and Intercept to this point, they no ads, at least so far, and that is good. They have no user donations which isn’t bad per se, but isn’t good either. For the most part, so far, they have taken the large source approach and dependence on Omidyar for funds is two edged. It is good in that it finances virtually unlimited expenses. But it is bad in that it makes the whole operation dependent on the largesse of an individual who can, at any time, interfere with other choices – and everyone involved operates in that knowledge.
Now consider another still more complex issue. How to make decisions? How to organize work? The same kind of assessment applies. We need to make decisions and to organize the tasks composing work – any organization does, of course. Should we do it in ways that are familiar from society now, matching people’s prior experience and expectations, etc. – or should we do it in new ways that attempt to move toward what we prefer for a new society?
The former approach is far easier, and at least in come respects we know that it works. It will likely be easier to get funding for the familiar and will fit people’s prior habits as well. A hierarchical approach to decisions will get decisions made. A corporate division of labor in which some folks monopolize tasks that are empowering while others do purely rote tasks will get work done. In contrast, a self managing approach that apportions to all workers a say proportionate to their involvement is uncommon to people’s experience and will require training and experiment and is unlikely to appeal to large donors. It asks for more participation from many folks, and strips some from other folks, as compared to what people are used to. Similarly, regarding apportioning work tasks, having balanced job complexes where everyone does a comparable share of empowering and therefore also of disempowering work, again asks of people a kind of involvement they are not used to and which many may find initially quite foreign and consider a burden.
The argument for the plant the seeds of the future in the present option of self management and a new division of labor is twofold. First, the choice won’t ratify what our long terms aims (should) want to transcend, and while the choice will risk new kinds of problems due to clashing with old habits and expectations, it will also allow new kinds of benefits due to diverse opinions and better developing and utilizing all participant’s talents.
Second, in a media institution, in particular, there is another argument. Take an analogy. Why should a media institution reject sexist or racist structures in its own organization? First, doing so will avoid ratifying and enforcing what needs to be rejected, and will allow new kinds of benefits (such as contributions from folks who would others be alienated and diminished)s. But, also, second, if a media institution is internally racist or sexist, then over time its ability to address issues of race and gender in its reporting and analysis will steadily deteriorate. It becomes steadily harder to even perceive much less critique what one is daily engaging in. And the point of the analogy is that the same observation holds for having internal authoritarianism or corporate divisions of labor. The rational justifying that choice will infect people’s values and perceptions and will inhibit and even obliterate prospects for media coverage to address power and class issues properly.
So now we can return to The Intercept and First Look. The rock is succumbing to incorporating old habits and relations. The hard place is trying to attain desirable structures but having the effort to do so clash with old habits and expectations – as well as generating external opposition. So, for this media experiment, the issue becomes how to raise finances, make decisions, and define jobs and rules for employees. And what is at stake is two fold – will the editorial side’s content be compromised and will the institution serve as a positive model.
To judge choices that are made is always hard from outside. But the basis for judgment ought to be evident.
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1 Comment
On the practical level of the radical activist, the dilemma often comes down to discourse. Working for reform with reformists, the radical insists that the anti-capitalist critique and language, in the form of slogans, messaging, agit-prop etc, be out front and displayed to the public. The reformers insist that the language be muted to build popular appeal. Big rock, very hard place.
The other issue is legitimizing current institutions and structures. FDR saves capitalism from itself and every progressive into the present believes this is the model for change. Win a concession from Capital and everyone is relieved to see that capitalist “democracy” or “the judiciary” or the State “process” works just fine, thankyou, no need for utopian dreaming.