I am sixty seven. I remember being much younger and the hostility I felt for most older folks. I didn’t hate their greater experience or their relative lack of energy. It was that they didn’t address criticism. They didn’t assess hopes. They didn’t deny commitment. They waved it all aside as psychotic jibber jabber.
They didn’t add coherence, clarity, or reach. They didn’t lend a helping hand. They intoned “You’ll grow out of it like we did and come to realize that social gains can only be modest, regardless of right and wrong. You are melodramatic, self destructive, egocentric, and throwing your future away. Grow up.”
In response my generation announced we would be different than our parents and their parents, and on back. Nothing would disrupt our dismissal of society. We were revolutionaries. Growing older wouldn’t turn us around.
We despised compromised lives. We detested ticky tacky suburbia. We loathed gray flannel suits. We would not become clowns on commission. We would never travel ancient empty streets.
When I was twenty, youthful vim, vigor, and outrage, were not a phase. If these receded, we knew it wouldn’t be a sign of “growing up” but scars of the wear and tear of oppressive institutions. If we lost our commitment, we would not have gained wisdom, insight, or practicality. We would have submitted to social battering or sold out to self-serving compromise.
Eyes in our pockets, nose on the ground? My generation? Never.
In our best moments, we accepted that transcending unfounded fantasies would be progress, developing a sense of timing and proportion would be progress, developing tolerance for things we didn’t yet understand would be progress, and even learning to empathize with the maudlin “maturity” we hated in our elders would be progress.
But we also knew that becoming what we rejected would be regression. No Pied Piper prison for us. We would not be turned around.
But, in truth, my generation, now a half century older, has not been much better at avoiding u-turn than the generations that preceded us. Somewhere we went from being busy being born to being busy dying.
Look in the mirror. Do you see someone old in spirit? If so, it may because you have bent yourself to survive hostile circumstances without constantly contesting the contemptable. But however understandable our journey has been, we were right decades back when we foresaw that if we lost our edge it would reveal collapse, not wisdom. So what is to be done?
First, no more excuses from my generation. Are you young? If so, ask your older friends, your parents, or grand parents – the ones who were revolutionary in their values, ideas, and commitments when they were twenty but who aren’t now – parent, grandparent, can you honestly say that your current self could out reason your young self? Is your old self accomplishing more for others? Is your old self more admirable?
What has been lost by my generation moving from young to old vastly outweighs what has been gained, especially if we admit that we didn’t have to jettison intelligence to gain patience. Had we retained intelligence, our patience would be far more valuable.
In 1968 the youthful revolutionary organization, the Weatherman, had a succinct credo: Country Sucks, Kick Ass. This wasn’t wisdom to last a lifetime. But for most folks who were active forty five years ago, even in outrageously juvenile organizations like The Weathermen, the underlying motivations and insights that led us to call ourselves revolutionary were sound. They were the baby that should not have been jettisoned with the bathwater.
We realized that when our society’s institutions worked most positively, alienation, disenfranchisement, inequality, misdirection of energies, violation of earth and sky, denial of human potential, and rampant indignity were endemic. When they manifested their worst, it included grotesque poverty, rampant anti-social violence, vile racism, epidemic rape, sweat shop slavery, international starvation, rampant preventable disease, death squads, and war.
Were these lists of ills just words to us? No, we went beyond realizing these ills existed to actively opposing them.
When we were younger, the institutions we found culpable were private ownership of the means of production, market competition, the patriarchal nuclear family, coercive hierarchical government, and racism and bigotry in all their forms. We understood that mitigating the pains of these institutions by winning immediate limited reforms was a positive short term aim. But we also understood that the ultimate goal for anyone truly concerned about human well being had to be attaining new institutions that could facilitate societal production, consumption, allocation, procreation, socialization, celebration, and administration not just for the benefit of a few, but consistently with the most humane and just aspirations of the many.
We celebrated human potential.
We foresaw real people like ourselves conducting themselves socially and humanely in environments that facilitated such choices.
We sought new ways of organizing work and consumption and of deciding who had a claim on what parts of the social product.
We favored men and women birthing and parenting new generations without adopting roles imbuing misogynist assumptions and hierarchical attitudes.
We envisioned a world in which humans respected their natural home and were mindful caretakers of its wealth and beauty.
We desired justice in allocation and in all circumstances.
We wanted biological and cultural differences to be celebrated in ways that generated ever growing knowledge of ourselves and our natural environments.
We believed people could behave with social conscience and mutual solidarity not due to undergoing a supernatural transformation of our natures, but by virtue of being born and prospering in respectful, dignified, enlightening and inspiring environments.
And in all this we were perfectly sensible. And beyond informing our insights, we took our passion to the streets.
There was nothing wrong with this forty five years ago, and indeed, we know more now about what kinds of changes are needed and about what the pernicious obstacles are. So what follows?
Well, it isn’t that old folks with still functioning minds should run around screaming “revolution now,” or “country sucks, kick ass.” But there is a considerable difference between: (a) having one’s head in the sand and doing nothing to change the world for the better, (b) working for valuable changes but with one’s focus only on the immediate reforms being sought, and (c) working for immediate changes while focusing as well on long-run solutions.
Our commitment to ultimately revolutionize all sides of life should affect how we define our immediate campaigns and inform what we emphasize when we organize, write, speak, and teach. It should help us choose what ideas to convey and what commitments to elicit.
But has this been true for activism today – and for decades? Or has the absence of shared long-term commitments weakened not only our prospects of organizing usefully toward a distant end, but also our near-term efforts to reduce pain today?
My generation has an excuse for relative passivity. It is a bad one. It certainly doesn’t apply to many prior years. But, right now, it is an excuse, nonetheless. Tired blood. Creaking joints. Dissipating memory. But what about today‘s youth?
Does today‘s activism lack informed, shared revolutionary vision and sustained revolutionary commitment, even among the young? Is today’s activism too narrowly informed? Does it too rarely incorporate the kind of logic, solidarity, and spirit able to sustain long-term involvement? Some may say, no, that is nonsense. Stop criticizing what you don’t understand. We have it all.
Similarly, are current movements often too narrow in focus, too lacking in depth of aims, and too limited in spiritual and moral appeal to attract wide and lasting support? Do they even speak to most people in ways those people can relate to? How can we answer questions like these?
Well, we can look around. Do movements attract wide and lasting support – not hundreds, not thousands, not even tens of thousands of people, but millions? And does the initial support for movements last not for a week, a month, or a year, but for a decade and then decades? Again, the answers must inform our choices.
Even more disturbing, do our movements even celebrate their lack of longer term vision, breath of focus, audacity, and passion, not to mention their lack of ability to converse with normal citizens, as if these debits were virtues?
At the level of feeling, emotion, and consciousness – do today‘s projects too often fail to counter and sometimes instead even strengthen the belief that nothing significantly better than what current society offers is logically possible. Or, if it is logically possible, that certainly nothing significantly better than what we endure can be attained?
If a person believes little more that what we now endure is possible or attainable – and almost everyone has this depressed view – then isn’t he or she reasonable in rejecting trying for more? Docility grows in gardens of hopelessness.
Activists’ projects, young and old, too rarely convey a broad understanding of the systemic causes of today‘s problems. They almost never offer positive institutional alternatives that propel hope and sustain motivation. Because of these limitations, our efforts look to people other than ourselves like we are marking time or posturing while powerless. Our words and deeds do not counter the average citizen’s deep seated cynicism – which, of course, is precisely what must be countered to accomplish anything major and lasting. Thus the proliferating and diversifying old folks homes housing cynics galore.
A left worth joining should be fighting vigorously for immediate gains that can alleviate suffering and advance immediate dignity and justice. We should be seeking a thirty hour work week with full pay, full employment, real community control of police, a comprehensive housing program, a humane health care program, a rich pre-school and public education program, a real living wage, electoral reforms that empower disenfranchised constituencies and disempower the rich, a non-intrusive foreign policy, worker and community rights over corporate greed, and many other gains. But in pursuing all these goals, we should clarify and communicate not only how these immediate changes would each be worthy in their own right, but how they would be hugely more valuable linked together as part of a comprehensive process to attain a new society whose broad character we lay out in clear and reasonably concise language, and whose details we evidence, refine, and evolve by our practice.
We in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and schools need to jettison the timidity, defensiveness, and worry about being thought juvenile or irresponsible that has colonized our minds and habits. We need to replace all that rubbish with bold, honest, forthright statements. Our countries need the most profound and broad revolution in history. People of good will and clear vision need to be producing vision, testing strategy, implementing program, building alliances and organizations, winning immediate demands and parlaying them into greater power to win still more gains in a continuing trajectory of change.
We need to decide what we want. We need to live and fight for it. In a world like ours, how could it be otherwise?
Finally – if you read this and you think to yourself, oh, okay, sure, but “where’s the meat? Why isn’t this about our current moment? Why isn’t this about a battle being waged right now, about Ferguson and police violence, or about a housing struggle, or about the Mideast” – then, with respect, I suggest that you need to think more about it.
The question to ask today is not why is this so broad, but why aren’t the countless single issue struggles that people talk endlessly about, write endlessly about, and contribute endlessly and magnificently to, but that are focused in their conception and execution nearly exclusively on near term, relatively narrow gain, all instead being waged in light of a larger trajectory of change that transcends all single struggles?
Is there a succinct Tweet like summary. I hate the notion, but maybe this:
It is politically wise to pursue revolution while fighting, as well, for immediate gains.
And this: It is politically naive and even ignorant to pursue only single issue, short time horizon, activism.
Or this: We won’t achieve more if we don’t seek more.
Or this: We won’t achieve anything if we don’t achieve everything.
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5 Comments
These discussions about current passivism ignore the historic defeats of revolutionary socialism as well as the failed attempt to build socialism in one country. The historical motor,supposedly, of a left attempt to deal with capitalism was the desperation of the working classes, who were organized by their productive efforts,educated by the intelligentsia,and led by a corps of professional revolutionaries. Hope essentially stemmed from the inevitability of socialism or given desperation was a psychic necessity. However ,in the advanced economies the mass desperation of the working classes has been effectively mollified . So why do we assume that anything except slow incrementalism is the best outcome? The nostalgic references to the Weathermen can only further discourage ,for just what did they accomplish? Classical Leninism had nothing but scorn for petit bourgeois anarchists . Why are they considered as addressing deep problems?
Unfortunately,this may sound like a reactionary screed. I mean it to be a try at thinking thru how a progressive incrementalism (used to be known as Social Democracy) can be facilitated ,given current socio-economic realities–rather than bemoaning passivism.
Hi Brian…
For me, the most disturbing part is how few people try to do anything to undo the rampant doubt at the heart of movement difficulties.
How many writers write, organizers talk, activists plan – taking into account the need to undue the doubt? How many school themselves to be able to address it. And then how many do.
So few. Why?
It is like if you have a big project and there is an obvious obstacle, and you just ignore it, and instead do things, over and over, ad infinitum, that don’t address the problem.
Is part of the problem a lack of clear vision or comprehensive alternative to capitalism say? Or a fear to commit to one (discuss and debate it) if one is there, possibly because to place one there contravenes traditional left thinking? Historical fetishism?
My students (and other young activists I know) want to see real change, but for them revolution is an historical abstraction. So they settle for incrementalism.
They know it’s not enough. They want more. But they feel that past movements have come up short, so they don’t expect much. Some work very hard and try to bring a systemic analysis to groups they work with. But I think if I asked them if they think they’ll ever see revolutionary change, few would consider it a real possibility. They keep doing what they can, and some do think seriously about long-term movement building. They know revolution is necessary, but few if any expect it to actually happen.
I ponder Wallerstein’s (and others’) view of the links between the failures of the ’60s revolutions (other than in cultural terms, where the changes are quite profound) and the rise of religious fundamentalisms worldwide. And I often wonder if we’ll find a way out. I continue to challenge the apocalyptic outlooks that prevail in many radical environmental circles. But sometimes I have to force myself to be able to make a convincing case that there’s a better way, without resorting to platitudes and unconvincing formulas.
Confusing times…
Talking bout my generation? The mortgage is one great counter-revolutionary tool, bureaucratic, corrupt unions another, the Congressional Black Caucus another. Oh yeah, Lifestyle anarchists who love to smash private property and Progressives who refuse to talk about property. That’s a start anyway.