#but completely ignoring actual leftist ideals in the process.

[astralazuli]

[vibrates angrily]

I stg if I had any tolerance for dealing with the general public, I would be telling all those asshole W/atcher fans about how even if they paid their employees the BARE MINIMUM to meet their needs (& I'm talking just needs, just barely, no savings, no retirement, no anything unnecessary literally ever, all meals cooked from scratch at home as cheap as possible), they'd currently be spending AT LEAST $117k on payroll every month. & that's like everyone involved working full time, nothing more, including the three founders.

& guess what y'all? Workers' rights don't just go out the window because you want your shows for free.

These people still deserve a living wage. In fact, they deserve a bit more than that, imo. People deserve to not have to live on bare minimum.

& you don't get to be angry as a fan because creators prioritized keeping & paying their workers over you not having to pay anything for the art/content they make.

They are holding themselves accountable to the people whose lives depend on them. Screaming about how they aren't just abandoning their employees because you're mad just makes you look like an ass.

[the-library-alcove]

In the midst of the current Hamas/Israel conflict, the Antizionist movement has gone from being generally ineffectual to a state of being actively harmful in regards to their stated cause of Palestinian liberation.

And from what I've seen there are three primary issues with the Antizionist movement, as it currently stands, that contribute to that harmfulness and also actively inhibit their ability to achieve any of their stated goals regarding Palestinian liberation.

1. Maximalist Stance Focused on Ideological Purity

To the apparent mainstream of the Antizionist movement, there is no other acceptable position than the destruction or dissolution of Israel, possibly featuring a replay/do-over of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and anyone who disagrees is treated as a heretic. Diplomacy? Mutual peace processes? Two state solutions? All of these are not only Wrong, but a cause for shunning the disbeliever.

And, as part of this, people who are actually affected by the issue are spoken over and ignored, if not actively ostracized and attacked. This goes for both Israelis and Palestinians; in particular, Palestinians who are not onboard with this stance are treated as sellouts and traitors deserving of punishment and death, which goes to show how little concern there is in the movement for actual Palestinians, as opposed to the idealized concept of "Free Palestine".

Also affected are Jews living in the Diaspora, who are harm indirectly by the threats to their fellow Jews in Israel, but also directly from the rampant antisemitism in a movement that demands complete ideological conformity in order not to be shunned and demonized. Since 90%+ of them do not conform with that ideological stance, they are essentially freely targeted by the movement.

2. Cargo Cult Activism

This is a problem across the board of the antizionist movement. On one end we have BDS, which is predicated on using the same tactics as worked on Apartheid South Africa against a target, Israel, which has a completely different economy, history, and ethnic structure. And on the other end, we have random protestors trying to "raise awareness" by engaging in truly random acts of protest, sabotage, and arguably terrorism. As part of that, there is a noted tendency of such activists inserting the I/P issue into every other activism issue out there and treating those other issues as subservient and secondary to the I/P issue, if not outright "distractions".

The problem is that these movements and individuals are imitating the feel of effective activism without first identifying why those pieces of activism were effective in the first place. As part of this, there is also an intense willingness to ignore reality that doesn't conform with the narrative they've adopted as part of their activism, because they tell themselves that they are right, and if they try hard enough, reality will conform with what they want it to be... and the planes with cargo will arrive.

3. Rampant Conspiratorial Antisemitism

For a variety of reasons, including the above two, the Antizionist movement is rapidly turning into a Leftist version of QAnon, full of recycled Jew-hating conspiracy theories from the last two thousand years. Blood libel, "Jewish control of the government/economy/media", "Jews killed Jesus" deicide, and more, are not only commonplace, but egregiously popular in ways that make it actively hostile for any but the most compliant or ignorant Jew to be a part of the movement.

This accomplishes nothing in terms of gaining sympathy (as per point 1), but feels good (point 2) and just makes the general Jewish population fearful, and shows that the movement is full of hypocrisy when it comes to anti-bigotry principles, and is thus untrustworthy to the vast majority of Jews in regards to their safety.

[ishouldreallybeelsewhere]

okay so that loki video essay thing was going well, and then like a day into writing it i lost the hyperfixation so it's never gonna be finished. i still think it's alright, completely unedited, entirely a train of thought, i hope you like commas and pacific rim, it's only 2.8k

btw if something doesn't make sense, i was writing this while watching some video essays, and also haven't read it

Introduction

Loki is a show, well you know that, but a show that does everything right, until it doesn’t (crazy, I know). If you’re here, I assume you’ll already know a fair bit about it, but if you don’t, here’s a quick refresher. Spoilers for everything MCU.

Loki begins in 2012, technically, just after the Avengers go back through time from Endgame to meet themselves and grab the infinity stones. Unfortunately, the plan goes awri, and Loki ends up in possession of the Tesseract, the mind stone. With this, he teleports to a desert in [a place] and is quickly arrested and apprehended by the Time Keepers for ‘Crimes Against the Sacred Timeline.’ Sounds a bit cult-y if you ask me, and given that you’re stuck here, you will ask me. Essentially, his actions (taking the tesseract) were not supposed to happen. They created a branch, a new timeline, and, according to the TVA, if left unchecked, the timeline could cause a multiversal war that would result in the end of time. This is, to put it simply, a very interesting premise, and the first two episodes do a wonderful job of exploring the TVA and searching for the mysterious Loki variant who causes chaos and mischief, all while evading the time cops.

What is the TVA? Well, it’s the Time Variance Authority, which clears up nothing to those who haven’t seen the show. I would let a clip explaining it play, but I think I’d get a copyright strike, even though I’m fairly sure it’s within fair use. Regardless, the TVA is an organisation supposedly created by the Time Keepers, space lizards who brought together all of time into a singular sacred timeline. Had they not done this, time itself would have ended, how they did this is unexplained, and likely either impossible, or they are greater than gods in their power. Loki is immediately doubtful, but can’t deny that they must hold some power, because not only does his magic not work in the TVA, but infinity stones are useless too. Time is also stranger there too, more an idea as opposed to a set part of their reality. Many theorise that they reside within the quantum realm, which makes sense, as that is how one travels through time, at least in the marvel universe, but we can’t be sure until we get an explanation. Of course, I’m writing this long before I’ll see the finale, so who knows, perhaps I’ll have to rewrite it.

Now I’ve said all that without explaining what the TVA actually does. It’s pretty simple, similar to Stephen Hawking’s (???) ideas of the multiverse, every decision you make has the ability to make another timeline, one that is not part of the sacred way of time, and therefore must be pruned by the TVA before it grows enough to cause another multiversal war, despite multiverses being well-established in the MCU, but I know that’s different. Or perhaps the Time Keepers are lying (spoiler, they are, just not exactly in that way). Anyway, when someone makes a decision or takes an action that creates a new timeline, the TVA arrives. Minutemen arrest the ‘Variant’ responsible, despite their lack of intentional crime, and prune the new timeline, which we are told destroys it. Then Variants must stand trial for their crimes, in which they can either plead guilty or not, but really, that doesn’t make much difference, as they’re unable to make a case, let alone get away as innocent. Before they reach the court, however, Variants are dressed in TVA jumpsuits, have to sign off every word they’ve ever said, and a snapshot of their temporal aura is taken, for some reason. Yeah, it’s not really ever explained why they have to go through all that, like, why don’t they just prune them all, or just send them straight to court. It seems like they’re putting on a big show for nothing. Of course, if you have to go through all that, you probably won’t have time to think about the whys of your situation, which I’m sure the TVA uses to their advantage.

Now, we’re heading into real spoiler-y stuff, just in case anyone here hasn't watched episode three. If you haven’t, why are you here? Go, finish the whole series, and then come back. Alrighty. Now that everyone’s seen it all (apart from me at this point) we can continue.

Everyone working at the TVA is a Variant, and they don’t know it. The Time Keepers are said to have created everything within the TVA, every analyst, Minuteman, and whatever the other roles are. But that’s not true. They’re all variants who’ve been taken from their own timelines and had their memories wiped. This gives an explanation for the courtrooms, and the process to get into them. Robots will be melted from the inside out if they go through the temporal aura machine thingy, and I have a feeling it’s harder to reset a robot’s memories. Living beings are let through, and their actions in the courtroom could give a good overview of their strengths and intelligence, so it can be decided whether they’ll be pruned or ‘reset’ which we are told is killed, but with the information of them all being variants now available, is more likely having all their memories hidden, replaced with the idea that they’ve been at the TVA their whole lives, and that they were created by the timekeepers. Though why would space lizards create workers in the image of humans instead of like their own lizard-y selves. The TVA as a whole, as we are introduced to it, feels very cult-y. Things such as the videos Variants are shown upon being arrested, the whole ‘Sacred Timeline’ thing, the Time Keepers being viewed as almost gods, and that when one of the TVA’s own minutemen is told the truth (C-20) she is, well, removed. The TVA views Variants as criminals of the highest order. How dare they violate the sacred timeline?!!? Only, no variant knew that what they were doing was wrong, or that it even mattered, but if you’re late to work on a day where you weren’t supposed to be, then you’re removed from your timeline and charged. The sentence? Essentially death, or removal of all your memories and being lied to about everything, which might be worse depending on your stance on that kind of thing.

Anyway, the minutemen themselves are another issue that the TVA has. They respond with violence at every available opportunity, like when a young french child from the 1500s walks into a church, the first thing a minuteman does is reach for his weapon. This is also the scene where we’re introduced to my favourite character, Mobius, but more on him later. For now, I need to stay on track and keep in mind this part of the view has to remain consistent. All I can think of are the nerds I split. It seems I have an inability to stay on topic, however, I’m gonna try so you have fun keeping up with that.

Loki stood trial for crimes against the Sacred Timeline and, like any logical person may in that situation, relentlessly questions the validity of his conviction. The answers he’s provided with he just,, kind of,, disagrees with, which is fair. The concept of the TVA and the sacred timeline as a whole is absurd to him, as who would a god serve?

Part one: Glorious Purpose

Loki, in his own words, it ‘Burdened With Glorious Purpose.’ I’m so glad no one but me is gonna read this draft cuz I managed to spell many of those words wrong. His glorious purpose, in his eyes, is becoming the ruler of all, removing free will and choice from those beneath him, in a twisted attempt to make it easy for all living things. He believes in free will, at least, the free will of himself, and also believes that, out of everyone in the universe, he is the one who is right, the one who can make the world better, that is his burden. Now, you may look at that and think, ‘hey, for a god of mischief, that doesn’t seem very mischievous,’ and you’d be right. It isn’t. He’s evil, like, without a doubt, an evil person in his ideals and views of the universe, however, the change from mischief to villainy was rapid, as it’s shown that he was D.B. Cooper, and, when asked, said it was because he was ‘young and lost a bet to Thor’, which, like, okay, but that was the 60s or something. 50 years aren’t a lot in the face of 1,500, but a lot can happen then

Part something: ethics

So, as you’ve probably gathered by now, I’m a pretentious asshole, and with that comes three years of philosophy classes and a superiority complex, though perhaps that comes from the whole leftist thing. Anyway, as per usual, I got sidetracked. I’m watching a really good video atm, so lots of things are happening in my head right now. Back to being pretentious, I’m going to be talking about ethics, fun, and how that relates to the TVA, the sacred timeline, Kang, sorry, he who remains. Regarding the whole Kang thing, I haven’t read a single Marvel comic since I was a member of the comic book club 4(???) years ago. Gods, I’m so old. Yup Percy Jackson took up too much of my childhood. Sidetracked again! I apologise, anyway, everything I know about Kang the Conqueror comes from Tumblr, so I’m not going to spend any time talking about any parts of the character that aren’t shown in the show. I really want to be writing about Doctor Who right now but I have my notes up so I’m gonna do this. Okay, right. Ethics. I hope I don’t go into free will right now because I will never stop going on about that. Anyway, let's look at the TVA, ignoring Kang, not for simplicity, but to see if the ends do in fact justify the means as Mobius said. And by that I mean, if what employees of the TVA think is true, are their actions justified? Finally got to the point, after how many words? Too many, anyway, let’s start from the start (kinda).

In an actual, proper, organised essay, I think that whole last paragraph was supposed to be 1 (one) sentence long, maybe. I have been writing year nine level essays for many years, despite not being in year nine for many, many years, so, be glad you’re reading something I’m interested in. Back to the topic at hand, please. Sorry I just got distracted again. I shouldn’t have Tumblr open atm. Anyway, what are the TVA’s means? So, I’ve already explained what the TVA is, and what it does, but let’s use a fun example to show what they really do. Imagine you’re a kid (or maybe you are a kid, so imagine you’re a younger one) and you just got home from school. You just made an awesome new friend who believes in you and loves your art. This sparks your interest in art, leading to countless pieces, days and days spent drawing and painting and having a great time. Your art begins to take hold on the world, speaking to people, letting them believe in themselves, thousands upon thousands of people inspired to start their own art, to rebel against the system of capitalism and teach people that there’s more to life than a job. This begins the global radicalisation of the working class, and with that, rebellion and the downfall of capitalism. I’m in a good mood rn, feeling optimistic, so don’t worry about what’s happening. Anyway, with the downfall of human exploitation and eradication of poverty comes a branch in the Sacred Timeline, and as the root of it is you as a child making a friend, your 5-year-old self just committed a crime that, according to the TVA, is worthy of what they believe to be actual death, like, being pruned.

Now, this was a very umm, off-the-top-of-my-head example, and entirely makes no sense, but give me two seconds and I’ll remember my original point. Right. The risk of allowing the downfall of capitalism is the end of all time. Always. Maybe? But, in the eyes of the TVA, kidnapping a 5-year-old, putting them through a dehumanising process to be shoved in a courtroom and being accused of crimes against the sacred timeline, and what was the crime? Making a goddamn friend. As a child. Being supported in art. Doing what you enjoy, destroying oppressive systems that will eventually be the downfall of us all and so entwined with all the problems in the world that any chance of saving it revolves around its deconstruction. I’ve been hunched over too long and my back is really starting to hurt, but the essay must go on. And remember, the domino effect of that friendship never actually happened. The timeline was pruned before it could happen, so the crime is literally making a friend. Very extreme example sorry, but shock makes your point go across faster, and also sparks outrage, which I don’t want to happen, but with doing literally anything comes backlash, like stepping on the wrong leaf, or a butterfly. I hope you guys know that this is unplanned and probably unedited. Okay I need to watch Pacific Rim again. Okay imagine now they kill the child. Right. That’s likely what would happen. Children are weak (usually, Sylvie is just on another level of awesome) [author’s note, Crimson Peak is a horror movie and I’m very upset by that cuz now I won’t be able to watch it]. Alright, so, kill a child, or destroy all of time. Always. Maybe. The way we see the TVA in the first two episodes is through Loki’s eyes, as a cult-like lie with a cool retro/futuristic aesthetic (like Doctor Who, but more on that later). I have been sitting here for 4 hours and I can confidently say my cat is an asshole whose sole purpose in life is to want to come in right when I’m in the middle of a point only to not want to come in but allow me to lose exactly what I was about to say, meaning I’ve gotten next to nothing done. Hi, I'm back. I got distracted by My Little Pony and Pacific Rim. And checkers. Issues with pacing? I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Okay, so, I’m going to say something possibly controversial. When the stakes are the endings of the entirety of time, it’s okay to let a child die, and technically they might not die they’d just be sent to be either devoured the void or saved by a ragtag team of loki variants. Which is not great. That might sound like I agree with the TVA, but trust me, I do not. Not in the slightest. I hate the slimy bastards. (I do love every single character though, like all of them are awesome) The prickly pricks will bury us all!!! I don’t agree with them because I think there is a better way to handle the multiversal problem and the issue that arises regarding the particular cause of the multiversal war. That made no sense. You’re really just gonna have to guess at this point, however, for the solution, we must look into the finale and the reasoning behind He Who Remains’ plan. I said I wasn’t going to talk about him, but I lied (rule number one). Basically, from what I understood of his plan (which wasn’t much, I’m pretty stupid) was that there were two options; option number one was to leave him there, looking over all of time, preventing free will, so that the infinite variants of him that would come from timelines wouldn’t once again attempt to conquer all of the timelines (though if there are infinite ones, how would that work? Just kidding, you’re not allowed to question this). He dictates all. There’s no such thing as free will, and if you dare veer off the path, you will be pruned, and your timeline destroyed. His plan is to hand that power over to Loki and Sylvie, because he’s getting old and has lived long enough. The other option (and the one that’s taken in the show) is to allow Sylvie to kill He Who Remains and let the multiverse unfold, allow free will and chaos to reign, with the possibility and established likelihood of the destruction of time itself. Now, just putting this out here, what if there was a third option? My proposition is based of knowing next to nothing and not having seen Loki in a while, and that is,

[laranjatoranjalaranja]

Aesthetics and History of Art: what is their role under fully-automated luxury communism?

Aesthetics has become unpopular among the left. Today, it is commonly associated with fascism and right-wing manipulative propaganda tactics. Walter Benjamin’s famous text about the modern reproduction of artworks can be credited with laying out a great part of the structure and terms of this discussion. In his work, what he calls the “aestheticisation of politics” is famously associated with fascism, while art, understood as a kind of aesthetics that has been politicised, is contrarily and positively associated with communism.

The main reason why this text acquired the cult status it has today, within the artworld, is because of the way in which it defines contemporary art as inherently revolutionary. Benjamin believes that, thanks to recent advances in its technological reproducibility, truly contemporary artworks were finally freed from old hierarchical ideas of originality, and thus acquired a new and enhanced political potential, particularly suitable for the communist political project.

Aesthetics, on the other hand, without the politisation that would turn it into art, becomes simply the domain of appearances, simulation, and spectacle in the Debordian sense. And this is where this theory starts to show its fragility. 

A closer look at Benjamin’s theory reveals it to be susceptible to the same criticism as Debord’s Society of the Spectacle. As Jacques Rancière has pointed out in The Emancipated Spectator, the separation between the simulated appearances that seduce the masses, and the true reality only accessible to some, is unfounded and misleading, despite being commonly understood to be a fact of life. 

The legitimacy of this separation depends on a thriving platonic idealism that often affects both right and left of the political spectrum and which is particularly prevalent in the Western world. According to this ideology, the mind and the body are hierarchically separated. While the mind is our reliable means of accessing the truth, the body is the deceiving realm of flawed sensorial perception which is completely unreliable unless previously subjected to correction by reason.

If we understand aesthetics in its broadest possible form, as simply that which relates to the senses, it inevitably falls into the suspicious second half of this division. But art can still be saved if it is not understood in aesthetic terms but as politicised aesthetics. The politicisation of aesthetics entails fighting ‘the spectacle’, by subjecting the ‘simulations’ our body perceives to the political ‘corrections’ of our intellectual reason.**

To further clarify why this kind of framework is flawed, it becomes useful to make a quick detour to the work of another author. In Pedagogy of The Oppressed, Paulo Freire defines praxis as a dialectical union between theory and practice. This means that, while our theory can, and should, inform our practice, this same practice also needs to inform our theory, thus making sure it matches our actual, lived reality. This means that the relationship between mind and body, theory and practice, reason and senses, is better understood as one of cooperation and mutual dependency than one of hierarchy and antagonism. It also means that aesthetics, broadly understood, plays an essential role in this dialectical process.

But, going back to Benjamin, I have said that the main reason his theory got so popular within the artworld is because of the revolutionary character he assigned to art. But this is not the only reason. Complementing this idea, we have a second one which relates to the phenomenon of demonization of aesthetics I mentioned in the very beginning. 

It is becoming increasingly hard to ignore the fact that the art faces serious, and inherent, issues and contradictions. The complementing aspect of what makes Benjamin’s argument appealing is that it allows us to keep our faith in art, while also feeling like we are targeting the problems that ‘threaten its purity and integrity’. These problems are thus presented as non-inherent, originating from external sources, and a great deal of what made this ‘outsourcing’ possible has been the use of aesthetics as a scapegoat for the issues affecting art in general.

Aesthetics has proven to be a particularly good fit for this. This is because if, on the one hand, some people felt suspicious towards art because they thought it was shallow, futile and even deceiving, we could argue, like Benjamin, that this was a problem of aesthetics and not art. Although this ‘futility’ argument is relatively common, it is not a very strong one (as I have tried to show when I mentioned Ranciere’s critique). A strong argument that can be directed against art, on the other hand, would be that it is a historical invention of the modern West, which means it has not always existed and, therefore, the usefulness of its continued existence becomes open for debate. But this critique too can be diverted towards aesthetics. 

In fact, aesthetics much more that art, was accused of being something made up in the 18th century by Western white males unaware of their privilege, to create rules that would validate what they thought of as beautiful and worthy of attention. Aesthetics, as a discipline, deserved all the criticism it got. More recently, the art market and the ‘artworld’, where also targets of a similar critique which, was also perfectly valid but, for some reason, continued to assume that all these things can be separated from art itself. As if art could ever have come to existence, and continue to exist, without them.

This criticism of aesthetics as an academic discipline, the art market or the artworld, is usually done using a leftist discourse. But critiques that extend to the notion of art itself are rare. 

Occasionally, more radical leftists will become interested in topics like art. And many of them do end up realising, half way through their own research, courses or degrees, that all these accusations often thrown at ‘aesthetics’ are just as applicable to our notion of art. Frequently, these people end up being the ones who are more dismissive and suspicious of our contemporary cultural institutions in general. They often believe that art, like most of our contemporary culture, can be categorised as ‘capitalist spectacle’, and therefore should be understood as a distraction to be ignored. 

These people can be easily convinced that art is a capitalist invention of the modern West. But the conclusion they draw from this is that the best thing to do is to dismiss all the things presented as art by our artistic institutions as capitalist distraction tactics, meant to divert our attention from the ‘real’ issues. What they fail to recognise, on the one hand, is that art is not a distraction to be ignored, but a weapon to be fought. And, on the other hand, they make the mistake of accepting the terms in which the capitalist artworld defines what aesthetics can be.

Capitalism knows well how to use aesthetics to its advantage. It has developed things like marketing and branding, as well as art, which are complex and highly effective techniques designed to work specifically to its own advantage. It knows how to tell the seductive and persuasive story of its own triumph and legitimacy. 

This left, on the other hand, has little more than outdated ideas of communist propaganda, which are literally from the last century. And this is because, today, the left often conceives of aesthetics as either evil or merely secondary. We haven’t taken any time to develop an alternative way to understand this other part of us, the one that is more connected to the senses and which is equally essential to understanding the world around us.

While part of what I will do here is question the validity of, and politics behind, our modern notion of art, I also want to argue that aesthetics is, actually, not necessarily susceptible to the same criticism. Unlike art, the artworld and the art market, the word aesthetics can have an older, broader meaning. Aesthetics, as that which simply relates to the senses, is not susceptible to the same criticism as its modern academic homonym, or as art, because it is not to be understood as a Human creation. It is not connected to any idea of ‘what it means to be Human’ or any ‘essence’ of Humanity. So, in this specific sense, aesthetics can be said to be an a-historical concept.

The prevailing platonic idealism I mentioned previously, leads people to prefer thinking in terms of Art and Humanity, rather than in terms of aesthetics, which would imply the recognition of a common ground, shared among us and all the other animals.

Aesthetic sensibility, understood in this way, is possessed by anyone and anything that simply possesses senses. From humans, to animals and maybe even other kinds of beings. While we can say that not all cultures have art because the concept of art is an invention of the West, we cannot say the same of things like aesthetics in this broad sense.***

Rather than dismissing aesthetics as a product of capitalism or a more or less futile thing to be dealt with ‘later’, we need to recognise that capitalism will thrive as long as it continues presenting itself as the best, or even the only, materially realistic, viable, alternative. No matter how many theories and manifestos the left has, as long we are not capable of presenting aesthetic alternatives to what capitalism has been imposing, none of it will feel, or even be, translatable to real life.

The left cannot go on pretending like aesthetics is a dispensable, secondary issue. Aesthetics is not a distraction, it is an essential part of how we experience our lives and therefore it too deserves a pride of place in our political agenda. Ignoring it will not make it irrelevant.

At this point, I have been studying History of Art in academia for 5 years, and it strikes me how, despite appearances, truly revolutionary History of Art barely exists. Despite the overwhelming number of so-called radical journals and other kinds of left-wing publications, most of it is actually liberal. What I mean by this is that most of the people who write for these publications seem to share a common goal: to free art from the elites’ domination (much like Benjamin). This is a liberal goal because it aims at reforming rather than revolutionising the existing system. It aims at saving art at all cost and it rules of even considering that its obvious and persisting problems might be inherent and that a possible solution would be to replace it with something radically different. Related to this, is another striking problem which is the prevailing assumption that art and the elites are separable to begin with.

I want to make it clear here that art cannot be understood (especially within academic contexts) as a human constant. Studying the history of art implies that art has a history and, therefore, a historical origin. Humans were not ‘artistic’ by nature, since the beginning of time. Art is a concept created by the modern West. There were no actual synonyms to the word Art in non-Western cultures and no one in Europe was even talking about such a thing until the 18th century (see Kristeller’s The Modern System of The Arts (pt. I and pt. II) and Shiner’s The Invention of Art*). 

It is irresponsible and anachronistic for Art historians to say or imply that art is something that humans have always done. This is an imperialistic tendency that we need to, not only distance ourselves from, but also actively fight against. And I stress actively fight against because these things I am writing about here have already been mentioned in academic publications from decades ago (Kristeller’s first article was published in 1951).

Since its creation, Art has existed to serve the capitalist elites (see Taylor’s Art, An Enemy of The People*). It was created by them, for them. To both serve and represent their interests. 

I say capitalist elites, specifically, because the works commissioned by the traditional nobility did not fit with our modern idea of art in their original contexts. The treasures of the French monarchy only became Art when the bourgeoisie took over and made them what they are today - the collection of an Art museum. These objects were stripped of their original meanings and functions and became targets of ‘disinterested contemplation’ and those who see this as a revolutionary triumph over an oppressive regime conveniently forget that the reality is more complex and the same thing was also done with foreign objects stolen by the French colonisers, shortly after.

Today, many people are still wondering why is Duchamp’s Fountain Art. The answer is, mainly, because this is what the elites behind our art institutions decided is art. The line between Art and non-Art is merely an institutional one. Art is an institutional system. And this is a system whose tables cannot simply be turned because, in order for Art to exist, it needs to distinguish itself from other modern categories like crafts and popular culture. The category of Art depends on this hierarchical distinction because, simply put, Art is High Culture.

This means that as long as art, as we understand it today, exists, there must also exist a privileged group that gets to draw the line between High and low culture. The cultural identity of these elites might change overtime, but their status as oppressors will always remain, within this structure. This is why the quest to ‘democratise’ art is merely reformist rather than revolutionary. 

I am not advocating for the burning of museums, Futurism style. I do think museums are important sources of information that should be free especially when they are public. What I am saying is that when these museums exhibit things that were not originally intended to be art as if they have always and unquestionably been so, they are making a serious mistake. They are silencing alternative narratives and disrespecting the people who created the objects they claim to be spreading knowledge about. They are suppressing aesthetic diversity, not promoting it.

Regarding contemporary Art museums and galleries, I think it would be fair to say that they are mostly bullshit. I make intentional efforts not to give any of my money to them (this also applies to academic Art Schools). I sometimes visit them, when they are free, because I want my opinions to be informed. I don’t usually pay for any tickets (they are usually even more expensive than regular museums anyway) nor do I let myself be troubled by those who believe I cannot be an expert on Art with a proper opinion, if I don’t go to all the ‘landmark’ cultural events. I try not to let art snobs like Jonathan Jones dictate which cultural events are or aren’t worthy of attention.

To conclude, History of Art as an academic discipline still has serious issues. Real History of Art should recognise that Art has a specific historical origin, and not treat it like a mysterious (mythical) part of ‘Human Nature’. 

To do leftist History of Art, nevertheless, we need to take this even one step further and study the consequences of the capitalist origins of this phenomenon and how it developed from there. The impacts of its structure, the way it works, how it legitimises itself, its weaknesses, all these should be analysed in ways that will allow this phenomenon to be coherently perceived through a left-wing lens, subsequently enabling us to imagine viable alternatives to the current Art system (Richard Sennett does something like this in his book The Craftsman. If you don’t feel like reading, he also explains it beautifully in his lectures on craftsmanship available on youtube).

Also, I feel like I should mention that the mythical treatment Art historians give their subject, either emphatically and intentionally or through the passive and implicit acceptance of this mythical definition, is probably one of the things that mostly contributes to the much criticised workings of our contemporary art market. Surely, one of the reasons why artworks are sold at such exorbitant prices is because what these people are buying is not just good looking paintings. These objects are being sold as the latest, most recent pieces in the important puzzle that is Human History. Once gathered all in the correct order, these pieces are thought to reveal what it means to be Human. The ‘History’ of Art I’ve been criticising here is largely responsible for the maintenance of this profitable myth, that has been giving the powerful disproportionate control over the narratives of our collective existences.

Notes:

* If you don’t have access to these texts via your public libraries, genesis online library should have it for free download, just click here and try following the links presented (they are forced to keep changing domains because certain people don’t like it when information is too accessible).

** I do believe there is something more to be said about this politicisation of aesthetics. I think it can be a very useful and interesting terminology, but it needs to be conceptualised outside of this limited ‘reality versus simulation’ framework.

*** Or, for example, of something like venal blood. All people and animals with venal blood can be said to have venal blood, despite understanding or not what this means. A culture which does not understand what we mean by ‘art’ today, cannot be said to have it (they will have other things, which they will understand in different terms, and which, I want to emphasise, are not of lesser value just because they won’t fit our ‘artistic model’).

[theamazingsallyhogan]

The spectacular upset victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in her recent New York congressional primary election has catapulted the topic of democratic socialism to the top of America's political discussion. Conservatives have argued that the leftist politics of Ocasio-Cortez represent a policy program guaranteed to fail, and a sure electoral loser for Democrats. (Plenty of moderate liberals, including my colleague Damon Linker, have cosigned the latter part of that argument, too.)

Let's set aside electoral politics for now and focus solely on democratic socialist policies. Helpfully, we have a country that very closely approximates the democratic socialist ideal. It's a place that is not only very far from a hellish dystopia, but also considerably more successful than the United States on virtually every social metric one can name.

I'm talking about Norway.

As I explain here, democratic socialism is a political tradition aiming broadly at democratic control of the economy, achieved through electoral processes. In concrete terms, that generally means a completed cradle-to-grave welfare state plus democratic ownership of big swathes of the economy through mechanisms like a social wealth fund or state-owned enterprises. Importantly, this definition rules out authoritarian systems like the state socialism seen in the Soviet Union. Democracy means at a minimum regular, free, and fair elections, where a conservative party has a real chance of victory.

On the policy side, American conservatives have one international example in their case against democratic socialism: Venezuela. That country is ostensibly socialist and undergoing a severe economic crisis — so bad they're running out of toilet paper, says Tucker Carlson — and therefore leftism always causes economic disaster. The initial problem with this argument is that Venezuela is not a real democracy, as President Nicolas Maduro has been blatantly rigging constitutional and electoral processes to cling to power. Venezuela may embrace socialism, but it definitely doesn't embrace democratic socialism.

A more important rejoinder to this argument is Norway (and the other Nordic countries to a lesser extent). Norwegian workers are heavily protected, with 70 percent of workers covered by union contracts, and over a third directly employed by the government. The Norwegian state operates a gigantic sovereign wealth fund, and its financial assets total 331 percent of its GDP (as compared to an American figure of 25 percent). Meanwhile, its state-owned enterprises are worth 87 percent of GDP. Of all the domestic wealth in Norway, the government owns 59 percent, and fully three-quarters of the non-home wealth (as most Norwegians own their home).

Reliable statistics on the Venezuelan economy are hard to come by, but Norway is unquestionably more socialist than Venezuela according to the above definition. Indeed, it is considerably more socialist than supposedly-communist China, where only 31 percent of national wealth is owned by the state.

Norway is not some destitute hellscape. Indeed, not only are Norwegian stores well-stocked with toilet paper, it is actually considerably more wealthy than the U.S., with a GDP of over $70,000 per person. Even when you correct for the moderately large oil sector (which accounts for a bit less than a quarter of its exports), it still has a cutting-edge, ultra-productive economy — far from some petro-state living off oil rents like Dubai.

Socially, it routinely ranks as the happiest (2017) or second-happiest (2018) country in the world. The rest of the Nordics are also usually among the top five as well — even more remarkable when you factor in the phenomenon of seasonal affective disorder and the extreme northerly position of the Scandinavian peninsula.

On a snapshot of other quality-of-life measures, Norway boasts:

* A life expectancy of 81.7 years.

* An infant mortality rate of two per 1,000 live births.

* A murder rate of 0.51 per 100,000.

* An incarceration rate of 74 per 100,000.

How does all that compare to the United States? Well, our economy is somewhat less wealthy, with per capita GDP of $59,500 — but to be fair, that is about the highest outside of oil-rich or tax haven countries. Socially, however, the picture is much worse: America ranks in the mid-teens for happiest countries, while its life expectancy is two years behind Norway, and actually fell in 2016 and 2017. America's infant mortality rate is three times higher. Its murder rate is over 10 times higher, as is its incarceration rate.

Surely there are complicated factors here not accounted for by economic systems. But it's impossible to believe that better social health has nothingto do with the Norwegian state using its economic control to provide everyone with generous health care, high wages, shorter working hours, and other such goodies, while the more private, capitalist U.S. system creates situations like this:

The fact is, when it comes to building a decent place to live, Norway is completely blowing America out of the water. So while conservatives have been pointedly ignoring the most obvious and relevant piece of evidence in their spittle-flecked tirades against socialism, Norwegians can and do point to the United States as an example of what happens when you let capitalism run wild — and with a great deal more justice.

[larrykrakow]

My Return To Radicalism

New Post has been published on https://theprogressivemind.org/my-return-to-radicalism/

My Return To Radicalism

I stepped away from radicalism for a while thanks to some overall fatigue.  Politics can be very draining on the mind. Radicals like many of us are not always satisfied with what we see. We are often disappointed to no end. The leadup to where we got when Biden was sworn in was extremely stressful for many people including some of the most important people to me. I never actually wanted to see a Biden Presidency or an establishment Congress. After all, which one of us reading this wanted to see corporatists in power?  Most of us would take that over Trump and his version of fascism. I basically stepped away from the process and life took over.

Radicalism Is Not Always What It Seems.

Both elections cycles involving Donald Trump had a varying degree of radicalism from many angles. So when we on the left don’t get what we want in terms of policy, we go into groups on Facebook and cry bloody murder. Some people often post articles from right-wing conspiracy nuts if they discredit an establishment Democrat. To me, that is not true radicalism. It is what I would call pseudo radicalism. The real radicals are out in the street protesting with groups like Black Lives Matter and The Womens’ March. They are organizing general strikes and sick-outs. Radicals are boycotting businesses that are not taking Covid-19 seriously.

As a working-class man, I understand the value of radicalism. I also understand the value of strategy.

You may think that you are radical by yelling and screaming against Democrats in Facebook groups. The truth is, you are sitting in the world’s largest echo chamber and not reaching out to anyone who can be swayed to leftist ideals. Things like this tired me out. I was told that I was not one of them when I decided to vote for Biden as a means to get rid of Trump. Always, I have been a bleeding heart leftist who supported Bernie, AOC, and many of the ideals of Cornel West.

I was surprised that people could not join reality and understand what could have happened to us under another term of Trump. I actually saw people claiming to be leftists stating that Biden was worse than Trump. Those people are not radical. If this is you, you are a fool controlled by your own anger. That made me want to step away. Unfortunately, I have responsibilities as someone who cares about our destiny,  So, now I am back into the fold.

So how do I define radicalism?

Oxford defines it as follows.

the beliefs or actions of people who advocate thorough or complete political or social reform.

I think thorough or complete reform is not possible politically or socially. We will always have elements of sexism, racism, classism, and any other “ism” that we can think of. Ultimately, it is about progressivism. We are progressives. At least I hope you are if you are still reading. Maybe I am boring to you, but in the end, I want what you want. I want universal healthcare, a living wage, climate action, an end to the wars, and a living wage. There are many more things as well. I don’t want to further bore you by listing them all.

So if radicalism is advocacy for complete changes that are not possible at the end of the day, what can we look to achieve as leftists? We have to keep chipping away by ranting and raving. Keep demanding what you want. Keep funding leftist candidates like Jamal Bowman, Nina Turner, Cori Bush, and many more. Focus on Democratic strongholds and help radicals take out establishment incumbents. Create a caucus that has the same power that the Tea Party had in Congress in 2011-2012. Our job is to use our radicalism to disrupt. Again, we may never get the complete changes that we want. What we will get is substantial.

Radicalism and my way forward.

I was posting on this blog every day or two when I got started. I shared some personal stories and gave my world view on many things. Some things you found objectionable and some, you found informative. For those of you that liked and shared my content, thank you. 2020 was a trying year for me.

I nearly died of a virus that many still don’t take seriously. My father passed three days before Christmas and I was nearing the end of my working days for a while to come. I would take a few months to stay at home and study some web development stuff. Slowly, I eased my way back to work as I went through a few health issues related to my time with Covid-19. I still consider myself a long-hauler from the virus that nearly killed me. I have been working part-time as a butcher about a half-hour away from home. Now, I want to lend my voice to the discourse and see what I can do to help.

What I will do.

I will post on my blog and be brutally honest about what I think will happen. I have to carry a double-edged sword. Our fight should never be with each other, especially other leftists. Unfortunately, I know it will happen. I will lend a voice of reason to you and tell you what kind of chance there is to make a difference. My double-edged sword is firstly there to fight the right-wing. We all should be fighting them, even if it means backing up the establishment on a particular issue. The other edge of the sword is about a power structure. I am going to advocate for building greater numbers of the left in the House and Senate. I don’t believe we will ever have enough power to hold the Presidency, but we WILL have enough power to pressure any establishment Democrat into what we want. If you remember correctly, it was a blithering racist that signed the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act.

Finally, I want to end on this. Radicalism does not come in a Facebook group that serves as an echo chamber. It comes from action taken outside of the home and out of your device. Your device and Facebook are tools to organize. Furthermore, I will gladly march in solidarity with you on any of our progressive issues. My next promise to you is that I will ignore all of the posts in the groups complaining about some establishment Democrat without seeing any proposed action on your part. If you are mad at the establishment, tell me how you will make them hear you. I will gladly listen. Otherwise, you are just preaching to the choir

.

[laurarolla]

“Believe in your own Justice”: Why Metal Wolf Chaos didn’t come to America (until now)

In October of 2002, the US congress enacted the Iraq Resolution, authorizing actions against the nation of Iraq under what are now accepted to be false pretenses.  While various other countries pointed out the poor rationale for warfare against Iraq, 95% of Republican Representatives and nearly 40% of Democratic Representatives agreed to the resolution.  The Senate had majority support in both major parties, with only 1 Republican rejecting the resolution who is now a Democrat, and 42% of Democrats at the time rejecting it.  I’m sure some of you are wondering why I’m making this game’s non-release a political issue.  The answer to that, of course, is two fold.  First, everything is political and you can’t change that by ignoring it.  Second, the issue with Metal Wolf Chaos not being released in the US is that it is a flagrant satirical critique of not only the Bush Administration, but the US news media and, perhaps accidentally, an indictment of Liberal willingness to compromise with Fascism.

The game’s story is pretty straightforward.  You play as President and US Veteran Michael Wilson, son of a former president and hero of the Arizona Insurrection.  Soon after taking office, you are ousted by a coup headed by your friend and Vice President, Richard Hawk, who proceeds to reinstate slavery, declare marshal law, and begin hunting down and punishing anyone with seditious intent against him.  Fleeing the capital in the Air Force One (in a scene that appears to reference Mazinger Z), you work your way from west to east, freeing the country with extreme destructive force.  In the end, you manage to corner Richard, forcing him into space for a final confrontation to save America.  Why do you do all this?  Because you’re the President of these great United States of America.  Also, you manage to finish before a wildlife conference with Japan, meaning this whole process lasts maybe a couple of weeks?  Fun times.

The gameplay is pretty good, functional and fun if requiring a bit of time to get used to (a From Software tradition).  However, the only interaction you can have with the game is violent.  You save prisoners from cages by shooting them.  You destroy boxes to pick up hidden items, ammo, and materials hiding inside.  You find a hidden weapon in the statue of your dad by shooting it long after hearing your dad berate you for shooting him multiple times.  In a review of the game, Ollie Barder (freelance writer and Forbes contributor) points out that “much of the game purposefully exaggerates the selfish arrogance and insecurity of those in power, as Michael Wilson ultimately destroys half the nation he is trying to take back, including a memorable section where you attack an armored version of the White House (shrewdly called the “Fight House”). As far as he is concerned, Wilson still thinks it’s ‘his’ country and screw the Republic.”  So, that’s a straightforward critique of governmental overreach and excessive violence, but what about the other stuff I mentioned about media and the weakness of Centrists?

In 2003, media commentator Phil Donahue publicly criticized the upcoming invasion of Iraq on his MSNBC show.  Ratings of the show had been fairly low in 2002, but during the month of February 2003, Donahue had some of the highest ratings on the network.  Nevertheless, he was fired and his show was cancelled.  Internal memos revealed that the primary issue was concern that Phil’s political views were damaging the network’s rep while the rest of the news media was backing the illegal war of aggression.  And my oh my, Metal Wolf Chaos had something to say about this too.  Peter McDonald, a reporter for the fictional DNN, spends nearly the whole game reporting on your actions as terroristic violence against the righteous government of Richard Hawk.  Eventually, when Hawk makes his evil known overtly, Petey changes his tune on a dime, and even states that he always said you were right all along.  On the surface, this is pretty crappy, but it’s actually made sadder and more damning by the context.  See, throughout the game between each mission, you get to read Peter’s memoirs of the events, and discover that he began having misgivings about Hawk’s actions quite early in the story.  However, quite honestly, he was afraid.  He was too afraid to use his massive platform to reveal the truth, and it’s not unreasonable to have such fears when living under fascism.  Perhaps, however, if the media had spoken out ahead of time, they could have cut off the head of the serpent before it struck.  Peter’s cowardice and poor journalistic training led him to deny the truth for too long, and be stuck preaching a gospel he didn’t believe for a man he knew was a monster.  The effects of this “establishment bias” in our modern media have been a massive contributing factor to the rise of the modern american Nazi movement, spurred on and emboldened by wannabe dictator Trump.  

And thus, we are led into From Software’s most biting and perhaps unintended criticism of the American political system.  At the end of the game, hero Michael Wilson attempts to save Richard Hawk’s life as the two fall back to Earth.  He states that he sees Richard’s methods as mistaken, but his love for America as genuine.  This is absolutely absurd.  Hawk established a fascist system of marshal law, re-instituted slavery, and issued North Korean style punishments of entire families as a way to keep people in line.  He is as anti-American as they come, reminiscent of another fictional video game politician: Senator Steven Armstrong of Metal Gear Rising.  Armstrong intends to create a society that will foster the birth of an anarcho-capitalist/libertarian America, with every man for himself and might making right.  While the game openly acknowledges the appeal of Armstrong’s ideas in some respects (freedom, anti-war, anti-intervention, self-determination), the reality is that his plans will result in the destruction of more lives, and isn’t even guaranteed to work out.  Both Hawk and Armstrong house their vile beliefs and disregard for human rights and human lives in talk of making America great again, but they both completely abandon the entire ideal and reality of America in the process.  The difference is that Raiden points out that Armstrong doesn’t even really GET what the real issues are behind the problems he cites.  In regards to leftist ideology, Michael is akin to the mainstream Democrats and centrist Liberals, while Raiden is more of a Democratic Socialist or Progressive specificially in his reaction to Armstrong’s far right politics.  And I don’t think either of them do the best job confronting the issues, that isn’t their job or their thing.  They are fictional warriors, one of them a Republican even.  It’s up to us in the real world to confront the issues in our system, and Metal Wolf Chaos should be a call to action for all of us to believe in our own justice.

So, in essence, the TLDR of this is that From Soft wrote a satire about the weakness of American media and the selfish and ignorant nature of the politicians we have, and they mixed it with highly destructive fun and tiny mecha.  They also accidentally provided a perfect example of how centrists empower violent extremists with their cowardice and ignorance.  So, back in 2004, when we were blowing up a country for oil and denigrating anyone who spoke against the war as “hating the troops,” of course such a game wasn’t going to come out in America.  And the inability for many American gamers to see past the absurdity of the presentation, combined with the proof of concept of MGR’s story being accepted while explicitly criticizing many of the same political issues, has made the time right for Devolver Digital to “Mech America Great Again.”  And thus, while I will certainly buy, play, and appreciate this game immensely, I urge people to take its critique of US politics and media into account, and to believe in your own justice.

[queeranarchism]

8 Steps Toward Building Indispensability (Instead of Disposability) Culture

(Reposting this article by Kai Cheng Thom because Tumblr ate it. Sorry long post, page break hates me)

give an mc without integrity a mic

and s/he will rhyme the death of the people

—d’bi young anitafrika

When I first came into activist culture, I was a runaway queer kid searching for a home: a terrified, angry, suspicious, cynical-yet-naïve teenager whose greatest secret desire was for a family that would last forever and love me no matter what.

Yet I also knew that such a family could never exist – at least not for me.

You see, I had another secret: Underneath all of my radical queer social justice punk bravado, I knew that I was trash. I was dirty and unlovable. I had done bad things to survive, and I had hurt people. Sometimes I didn’t know why.

So when I found activist culture, with its powerful ideas about privilege and oppression and its simmering, explosive rage, I was intoxicated. I thought that I could purge my self-hatred with that fiery rhetoric and create the family I wanted so much with the bond that comes from shared trauma.

Social justice was a set of rules that could finally put the world into an order that made sense to me. If I could only use all the right language, do enough direct action, be critical enough of the systems around me, then I could finally be a good person.

All around me, it felt like my activist community was doing the same thing – throwing ourselves into “the revolution,” exhausting ourselves and burning out, watching each other for oppressive thoughts and behavior and calling each other on it vociferously.

Occasionally – rarely – folks were driven out of community for being “fucked up.” More often, though, attempts to hold people accountable through call-outs and exclusion just exploded into huge online flame wars and IRL drama that left deep rifts in community for years. Only the most vulnerable – folks without large friend groups and social stability – were excluded permanently.

Like my blood family, my activist family was re-enacting the trauma that we had experienced at the hands of an oppressive society.

Just as my father once held open the door to our house and demanded that I leave because he didn’t know how to reconcile his love for me with my gender identity, we denounced each other and burned bridges because we didn’t know how reconcile our social ideals with the fact that our loved ones don’t always live up to them.

I believe that sometimes we did this hypocritically – that we created the so-called call-out culture (a culture of toxic confrontation and shaming people for oppressive behavior that is more about the performance of righteousness than the actual pursuit of justice) in part so that we could focus on the failings of others and avoid examining the complicity with oppression, the capacity to abuse, that exists within us all.

And I believe we did it in part because sometimes it’s impossible to imagine any other way: We live in a disposability culture – a society based on consumption, fear, and destruction – where we’re taught that the only way to respond when people hurt us is to hurt them back or get rid of them.

This article comes out of that queer kid’s longing for forever-family, and from countless conversations with other members of social justice communities longing for the same. It comes out of my own fuck-ups having been generously forgiven by others, and from my effort to forgive those who have harmed me.

It comes from a desire I feel all around me for an alternative to the politics of disposability, for a politics of indispensability instead.

“Indispensability politics” isn’t a term I’ve coined personally. It has existed various communities for some time, and I learned it orally, though I cannot find a written source. But the following principles are ideas – suggestions for a foundation on which indispensability culture in leftist activism might be built. They are a work permanently in progress.

They’re not meant to be a new set of rules for activism. Nor are they a step-by-step guide for holding accountability processes or a complete answer to the questions that I’m raising around.

Still, I hope that they are helpful to you.

1. The Revolution Is a Relationship

sometimes

we want to close our eyes

jack off to pictures of radical disneyland

not watch as we gnaw our own

flesh into meat

—Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, “so what the fuck does conscious mean anyway”

Something that worries me about social justice communities is that we tend to conceptualize “revolution” as a product, as a place and time that we expend all of our energy and anger to create – often without regard to the toll this takes on individuals and our relationships.

In this way, “The Revolution” occupies a position in activist culture that actually reminds me of the role that Heaven played in the Chinese Christian community I grew up in: It is a fantasy of ideological purity against which our actions are judged, a place that we long to live in, but seems impossible to reach.

In our – often justified – anger and disappointment at the failure of ourselves and our communities to uphold the dream of revolution, we lash out.

We try to cleanse ourselves of the pain of betrayal by cutting off and driving out the betrayers – our abusive families, our conservative friends. We try not to look at the betrayer in the mirror.

What if revolution isn’t a product, some distant promised land, but the relationships that we have right now?

What if revolution is, in addition to – not instead of – direct action and community organizing, the process of rupture and repair that happens when we fuck up and hold each other accountable and forgive?

2. The Oppressor Lives Within

The most important political struggle I will ever have is against the oppressor – the racist, transmisogynist, ableist, abusive person – in myself.

I don’t mean to say this in a self-flagellating, self-blaming way. I’ve experienced oppression, violence, rape, and abuse from others, and this is not my fault.

I mean that I’ve started to believe that I can’t engage in authentic activism, I can’t create positive change without recognizing and naming my own participation in the oppressive systems that I’m trying to undo.

Coming from this position, I’m forced to have compassion for the people around me who I see also participating in oppression, even as I’m also angry at them. With compassion comes understanding, and with understanding comes belief in the possibility of change.

When we become capable of holding that contradiction in our hearts – when we can be angry and compassionate at the same time, at ourselves as well as others – entirely new possibilities for healing and transformation emerge.

3. Accountability Starts in the Heart

Too often, I’ve seen accountability processes in social justice communities devolve into vicious “your word against mine” situations and social power plays in which people accuse each other of harm and abuse.

As witnesses to these situations, we become trapped, caught in the double bind of either having to pick a side or doing nothing. Both options carry the risk of becoming complicit in the harm being done, and the “truth” becomes impossibly blurred.

I often wonder how different things would look if it were more of a cultural norm to understand accountability as a practice that comes from within the individual, instead of a consequence that must be forced onto someone externally.

What if we taught each other to honor the responsibility that comes with holding ourselves accountable, rather than seeing self-accountability as a shameful admission of guilt? What if we could have real conversations with each other about harm, in good faith?

In a culture of indispensability, I cannot ignore someone when they tell me I have harmed them – they are precious to me, and I have to try to understand and respond accordingly.

To become indispensable to one another, we must also be willing to be responsible for and accountable to one another.

4. Perpetrator/Survivor is a False Dichotomy

There is an intense moral dynamic in social justice culture that tends to separate people into binaries of “right” and “wrong.”

To be a perpetrator of oppression or violence is highly stigmatized, while survivorhood may be oddly fetishized in ways that objectify and intensify stories of trauma.

“Perpetrators” are considered evil and unforgivable, while “survivors” are good and pure, yet denied agency to define themselves.

Among the many problems of this dynamic is the fact that it obscures the complex reality that many people are both survivors and perpetrators of violence (though violence, of course, exists within a wide spectrum of behaviors).

Within a culture of disposability – whether it be the criminal justice system of the state or community practices of exiling people – the perpetrator/survivor dichotomy is useful because it appears to make things easier. It helps us make decisions about who to punish and who to pity.

But punishment and pity have very little to do with revolutionary change or relationship-building.

What punishment and pity have in common is that they’re both dehumanizing.

5. Punishment Isn’t Justice

Punishment is the foundation of the legal criminal justice system and of disposability culture. It’s the idea that wrongs can be made right by inflicting further harm against those who are deemed harmful.

Punishment is also, I believe, a traumatized response to being attacked, the intense expression of the “fight” reflex. Activist writer Sarah Schulman discusses this idea in detail in her book, Conflict Is Not Abuse.

It isn’t inherently wrong to want someone who hurt you to feel the same pain – to want retribution, or even revenge. But as Schulman also writes, punishment is rarely, if ever, actually an instrument of justice – it is most often an expression of power over those with less.

How often do we see the vastly wealthy or politically powerful punished for the enormous harms they do to marginalized communities? How often are marginalized individuals put in prison or killed for minor (or non-existent) offences?

As long as our conception of justice is based on the violent use of power, the powerful will remain unaccountable, while the powerless are scapegoated.

But even beyond this, a culture of disposability and punishment breeds fear and dishonesty.

How likely are we to hold ourselves accountable when we’re afraid that we’ll be exiled, imprisoned, or killed if we do? And how can we trust each other when we live in fear of one another?

We have to find another way to bring about justice.

6. Nuance Isn’t an Excuse for Harm

One of the most common responses I see to critiques of call-out culture and disposability is that perpetrators of violence and predators use these critiques to obscure their own wrongdoing and avoid accountability.

Furthermore, we, as communities, use the “complexity” and “nuance” of such critiques as excuses for not intervening when harm is being done.

But indispensability means that everyone – especially those have experienced harm – are precious and require justice. In other words, we cannot allow the fact that something is complicated or scary prevent us from trying to stop it.

Trapped in the perpetrator/survivor dichotomy of understanding harm, it might seem like we have only two options: to ignore harm or to punish perpetrators.

But in fact, there are often other strategies available.

They involve taking anyone’s – everyone’s – expressions of pain seriously enough to ask hard questions and have tough conversations. They involve dedicating time and resources to ensuring that anyone who has been harmed has the support they need to heal.

7. Healing Is Both Rage and Forgiveness

If the revolution is a relationship, then the revolution must include room for both rage and forgiveness: We have to be able to tolerate the inevitability that we will be angry at one another, will commit harm against one another.

When we are harmed, we must be allowed the space to rage. We need to be able to express the depth of our hurt, our hatred of those who hurt us and those who allowed it to happen – especially when those people are the ones we love.

It is up to the community to hold and contain this rage – to hear and validate and give it space, while also preventing it from creating further harm.

The expression of anger and pain is key to the transformation of violence into healing, because it allows us to understand what has happened and motivates us to change.

And it’s up to the community as well to then provide a framework for forgiveness, to help envision a future where forgiveness is possible, and how it might be achieved.

8. Community Is the Answer

There are no activist communities, only the desire for communities, or the convenient fiction of communities. A community is a material web that binds people together, for better and for worse, in interdependence…

If it is easier to kick someone out than to go through a difficult series of conversations with them, it is not a community. Among the societies that had real communities, exile was the most extreme sanction possible, tantamount to killing them. On many levels, losing the community and all the relationships it involved was the same as dying.

Let’s not kid ourselves: We don’t have communities.

—Anonymous, Broken Teapot Zine

The above quote is a revealing glance into the inner dynamics of social justice and activist culture.

It reveals the source of our incapacity to create accountability and the deep emotional and material insecurities that lie beneath it.

Perhaps the reason we tend to recreate disposability culture and trauma responses over and over is because we are all, secretly, that frightened runaway kid, constantly searching for a home, but not really believing we can find one.

Maybe we don’t create communities of true interdependence – of indispensability, of forever-family – because we are terrified of what will happen if we try.

But I believe, have to believe, that true community is possible for me and for all of us. The truth is, we can’t keep going on the way we have been. We need each other, need to find each other, in order to survive.

And I have faith that we can.

[teachanarchy]

What is Leftism?

For most it means some form of socialism, despite the fact that there are plenty of leftists who are not opposed to capitalism (clearly from the actual history of socialism, not all socialists are opposed to capitalism either). Plenty of other arguments can be made about that, but let’s just keep things simple and assume that the two terms are synonymous. As is the case with most vague terms, however, it’s easier to come up with a list of characteristics than a definition. Leftism encompasses many divergent ideas, strategies, and tactics; are there any common threads that unite all leftists, despite some obvious differences? In order to begin an attempt at an answer, it is necessary to examine the philosophical antecedents to what can broadly be termed Socialism.

Liberalism, Humanism, and Republicanism are political and philosophical schools of thought deriving from the modern European tradition (roughly beginning during the Renaissance). Without going into details, adherents of the three (especially Liberalism) presume the existence of an ideal property-owning male individual who is a fully rational (or at least a potentially rational) agent. This idealized individual stands opposed to the arbitrary authority of the economic and political systems of monarchism and feudalism, as well as the spiritual authority of the Catholic Church. All three (LH&R) presume the capacity of anyone (male), through education and hard work, to succeed in a free market (of commodities and ideas). Competition is the overall ethos of all three.

The promoters of LH&R insist that these modernist philosophies-compared to monarchism, elitism, and feudalism-are advances on the road to human freedom. They believe it more beneficial for what they call The Greater Good to adhere to and promote a philosophy that at least proposes the ability of anyone to gain some kind of control over her/his own life, whether in the realm of education, economic prosperity, or political interactions. The ultimate goals of LH&R are to do away with economic scarcity and intellectual/spiritual poverty, while promoting the idea of more democratic governance. They promote this under the rubric of Justice, and they see the State as its ultimate guarantor.

Socialism as a modern movement has been greatly influenced by these three philosophies. Like those who adhere to LH&R, leftists are concerned with, and are opposed to, economic and social injustice. They all propose ameliorating social ills through active intervention or charity, whether under the auspices of the State, NGOs, or other formal organizations. Very few of the proposed solutions or stopgaps promote (or even acknowledge) self-organized solutions engaged in by those directly suffering such ills. Welfare, affirmative action programs, psychiatric hospitals, drug rehabilitation facilities, etc. are all examples of various attempts to deal with social problems. Given the premises of these overlapping philosophies and their practical frameworks, they have the appearance of being the results of intelligence and knowledge mixed with empathy and the desire to help people. Cooperation for The Common Good is seen as more beneficial to humanity than individual competition. However, socialism also takes the existence of competition for granted. Liberals and socialists alike believe that human beings do not naturally get along, so we must be educated and encouraged to be cooperative. When all else fails, this can always be enforced by the State.

Moderate, Radical, and Extreme Leftism Tactics and strategies

Regardless of the fact that there is plenty of overlap and blending-precluding real, discrete boundaries-I hope that describing these various manifestations of leftism will be a way to identify certain particular characteristics.

In terms of strategy and tactics, moderate leftists believe that things can be made better by working within current structures and institutions. Clearly reformist, moderate leftists promote legal, peaceful, and polite superficial alterations in the status quo, eventually hoping to legislate socialism into existence. The democracy they champion is bourgeois: one person, one vote, majority rule.

Radical leftists promotes a mixture of legal and illegal tactics, depending on whatever appears to have a better chance of succeeding at the moment, but they ultimately want the sanction of some properly constituted legal institutions (especially when they get to make most of the rules to be enforced). They are pragmatic, hoping for peaceful change, but ready to fight if they believe it to be necessary. The democracy they promote is more proletarian: they aren’t worried about the process of any particular election, so long as gains are made at the expense of the bosses and mainstream politicians.

Extreme leftists are amoral pragmatists, a strategic orientation that can also be termed opportunistic. They are decidedly impolite, explicitly desiring the destruction of current institutions (often including the State), with the desire to remake them so that only they themselves will be able to make and enforce new laws. They are much more willing to use force in the service of their goals. The democracy they promote is usually based on a Party.

Relationship to capitalists

All leftists privilege the category of worker as worker/producer, an entity that exists only within the sphere of the economy. Moderate leftists campaign for workers’ rights (to strike, to have job security and safety, to have decent and fair contracts), trying to mitigate the more obvious abuses of the bosses through the passage and enforcement of progressive legislation. They want capitalism to be organized with “People Before Profits” (as the overused slogan has it), ignoring the internal logic and history of capitalism. Moderate leftists promote socially responsible investing and want a more just distribution of wealth; social wealth in the form of the much-touted “safety net,” and personal wealth in the form of higher wages and increased taxes on corporations and the rich. They want to balance the rights of property and labor.

Radical leftists favor workers at the expense of the bosses. Workers are always right to the radical leftist. They wish to change the legal structure in such a way to reflect this favoritism, which is supposed to compensate for the previous history of exploitation. The redistribution of wealth envisioned by radical leftists builds on the higher wages and increased taxation of the corporations and the rich to include selective expropriation/nationalization (with or without compensation) of various resources (banks, natural resources for example).

Extreme leftists promote the total expropriation — without compensation — of the capitalist class, not only to right the wrongs of economic exploitation, but to remove the capitalist class from political power as well. At some point, the workers are to be at least nominally in charge of economic and political decision making (although that is usually meditated through a Party leadership).

The role of the State

Leftists view the State on a continuum of ambivalence. Most are clear that the role of the State is to further the goals of whatever class happens to rule at any given period; further they all recognize that the ruling class always reserves for itself a monopoly on the legitimate use of force and violence to enforce their rule. In the political imaginations of all moderate and some radical leftists, the State (even with a completely capitalist ruling class) can be used to remedy many social problems, from the excesses of transnational corporations to the abuses of those who have been traditionally disenfranchised (immigrants, women, minorities, the homeless, etc.). For extreme leftists, only their own State can solve such problems, because it is in the interest of the current ruling class to maintain divisions among those who are not of the ruling class. Despite the ambivalence, an attachment to the functions of government as executed by the State remains. This is the pivotal area of conflict between all leftists and all anarchists, despite the historical positioning of anarchism within the spectrum of leftism — about which more below.

The role of the individual

Missing from all these different strains of leftism is a discussion of the individual. While LH&R refer briefly to the individual, these philosophies do not take into account non-property-owning males, females, or juveniles — who are indeed considered the property of the normative individual: the adult property-owning man. This led to the complete lack on interest in (and the accompanying exploitation of) peasants and workers, a disregard that is supposed to be corrected by socialism. Unfortunately, virtually all socialists only posit the category Worker and Peasant as collective classes — a mass to be molded and directed — never considering the desires or interests of the individual (male or female) worker or peasant to control their own lives. According to the ideological imperatives of leftist thought, the self-activity of these masses is seen suspiciously through the ideological blinkers of the competitive ethos of capitalism (since the masses aren’t yet intelligent enough to be socialists); the workers will perhaps be able to organize themselves into defensive trade unions in order to safeguard their wages, while the peasants will only want to own and work their own piece of land. Again, education and enforcement of cooperation is necessary for these masses to become conscious political radicals.

A Generic Leftism?

So all leftists share the goals of making up for injustice by decree, whether the decree comes out of better/more responsive representatives and leaders, a more democratic political process, or the elimination of a non-worker power base. They all desire to organize, mobilize, and direct masses of people, with the eventual goal of attaining a more or less coherent majority, in order to propel progressive and democratic change of social institutions. Recruitment, education, and inculcating leftist values are some of the more mundane strategies leftists use to increase their influence in the wider political landscape.

All leftists have a common distrust of regular (non-political/non-politicized) people being able to decide for themselves how to solve the problems that face them. All leftists share an abiding faith in leadership. Not just a trust of particular leaders who portray themselves as having certain moral or ethical virtues over and above common people, but of the very principle of leadership. This confidence in leadership never brings representational politics into question. The existence of elected or appointed leaders who speak and act on behalf, or in the place, of individuals and groups is a given; mediation in the realm of politics is taken as a necessity, removing most decision making from individuals and groups. Leftists share this commitment to leadership and representation — they believe themselves able to justly represent those who have traditionally been excluded from politics: the disenfranchised, the voiceless, the weak.

The leftist activist, as a representative of those who suffer, is a person who believes her/himself to be indispensable to improving the lives of others. This derives from a dual-pronged notion common to all leftists:

Non-political people, left to their own devices, will never be able to alter their situations in a radical or revolutionary manner (Lenin’s dismissal of workers as never being able to move beyond a “trade union mentality” without some professional outside help comes to mind here); and

Those with more intelligence or a better analysis are both wise and ethical enough to lead (whether through example or by decree) and organize others for their own good, and perhaps more importantly, the greater good.

The unspoken but implicit theme that runs through this brief assessment of leftism is a reliance on authoritarian relations, whether assumed or enforced, brutally compelling or gently rational. The existence of an economy (exchange of commodities in a market) presumes the existence of one or more institutions to mediate disputes between those who produce, those who own, and those who consume; the existence of a representational political process presumes the existence of one or more institutions to mediate disputes between diverse parties based on common interest (often with conflicting goals); the existence of leadership presumes that there are substantive differences in the emotional and intellectual capacities of those who direct and those who follow. There are plenty of rationalizations contributing to the maintenance of such institutions of social control (schools, prisons, the military, the workplace), from efficiency to expediency, but they all ultimately rely on the legitimate (sanctioned by the State) use of coercive authority to enforce decisions. Leftists share a faith in the mediating influence of wise and ethical leaders who can work within politically neutral, socially progressive, and humane institutional frameworks. Their thoroughly hierarchical and authoritarian natures, however, should be clear even after a cursory glance.

Are All Forms of Anarchism Leftism

All anarchists share a desire to abolish government; that is the definition of anarchism. Starting with Bakunin, anarchism has been explicitly anti-statist, anti-capitalist, and anti-authoritarian; no serious anarchist seeks to alter that. Leftists have consistently supported and promoted the functions of the State, have an ambiguous relationship to capitalist development, and are all interested in maintaining hierarchical relationships. In addition, historically they have either tacitly ignored or actively suppressed the desires of individuals and groups for autonomy and self-organization, further eroding any credible solidarity between themselves and anarchists. On a purely definitional level, then, there should be an automatic distinction between leftists and anarchists, regardless of how things have appeared in history.

Despite these differences, many anarchists have thought of themselves as extreme leftists — and continue to do so — because they share many of the same analyses and interests (a distaste for capitalism, the necessity of revolution, for example) as leftists; many revolutionary leftists have also considered anarchists to be their (naïve) comrades — except in moments when the leftists gain some power; then the anarchists are either co-opted, jailed, or executed. The possibility for an extreme leftist to be anti-statist may be high, but is certainly not guaranteed, as any analysis history will show.

Left anarchists retain some kind of allegiance to 19th century LH&R and socialist philosophers, preferring the broad, generalized (and therefore extremely vague) category of socialism/anti-capitalism and the strategy of mass political struggles based on coalitions with other leftists, all the while showing little (if any) interest in promoting individual and group autonomy. From these premises, they can quite easily fall prey to the centralizing tendencies and leadership functions that dominate the tactics of leftists. They are quick to quote Bakunin (maybe Kropotkin too) and advocate organizational forms that might have been appropriate in the era of the First International, apparently oblivious to the sweeping changes that have occurred in the world in the past hundred-plus years — and they then have the gall to ridicule Marxists for remaining wedded to Marx’s outdated theories, as if by not naming their own tendencies after other dead guys they are thereby immune from similar mistakes.

The drawbacks and problems with Marxism, however — for example that it promotes the idea of a linear progression of history of order developing out of chaos, freedom developing out of oppression, material abundance developing out of scarcity, socialism developing out of capitalism, plus an absolute faith in Science as the ideologically neutral pursuit of pure Knowledge, and a similar faith in the liberatory function of all technology — are the same drawbacks and problems with the anarchism of Bakunin and Kropotkin. All of this seems lost on left anarchists. They blithely continue to promote a century-old version of anarchism, clearly unaware of, or unconcerned by, the fact that the philosophical and practical failures of leftism — in terms of the individual, the natural world, and appropriate modes of resistance to the continued domination of a flexible, adaptable, and expanding capitalism — are shared by this archaic form of anarchism as well.

Those of us who are interested in promoting radical social change in general, and anarchy in particular, need to emulate and improve upon successful (however temporary) revolutionary projects for liberation, rather than congratulating ourselves for being the heirs of Bakunin (et al.). We can do this best if we free ourselves from the historical baggage and the ideological and strategic constraints of all varieties of leftism.

[comrade-meow]

Feminism has become the staple bête noire for many on the left today. It has become fashionable for many self-proclaimed communists to denounce feminism as either bourgeois, a form of identity politics, or both. Many of these assertions rest on deliberate misreadings of the giants of Marxist feminism, as well as more superficial semantic arguments. And no more strain of feminism is more thoroughly thrashed and maligned by the so-called “woke” left than radical feminism, which is denounced on the above assertions to an even more vicious and ridiculous degree. The reality is that feminism is not only compatible with Marxism, but is indispensable to Marxism. Without the liberation of women, there can be no successful socialist revolution. Lenin famously stated that “There cannot be, nor is there nor will there ever be real ‘freedom’ as long as there is no freedom for women from the privileges which the law grants to men, as long as there is no freedom for the workers from the yoke of capital, and no freedom for the toiling peasants from the yoke of the capitalists, landlords and merchants.”[1] But for the crude class reductionists who worship at the altar of workerism this point falls on intentionally deaf ears. While the first two parts in this series were more theory-focused, this final chapter is more polemical than theoretical, aiming to re-affirm the indispensability of feminism to the revolutionary socialist project.

The claim that feminism is bourgeois was first popularized by the International Communist League, more popularly known as the Spartacist League, famous for their “revolutionary” defense of rapist filmmaker Roman Polanski, and the sex club NAMBLA.[2] The equally noxious Socialist Equality Party, also famous for its defense of rapists, as well as snitch-jacketing against “Stalinist spies”, similarly denounce feminism as bourgeois. Both organizations claim they support not feminism, but “women’s liberation”. While these two sects are not very influential in of themselves on the left as a whole, their anti-feminist, pro-“women’s liberation” line has been picked up by many so-called leftists, mostly men. To justify these positions, Alexandra Kollontai’s The Social Basis of the Woman Question is cited, but what these arguments miss is that Kollontai was not denouncing feminism as a whole, but bourgeois feminism. Kollontai, along with her contemporaries Rosa Luxemburg and Clara Zetkin, pushed for the radicalization and evolution of feminism; just as communism represented the culmination of Enlightenment radicalism, they sought to create a feminism that would represent the ideological pinnacle of the struggle for women’s liberation, as well as a guide to action for working class women. What these revolutionary women made recognized was that while there are issues that unite all women, cross-class collaborationism will ultimately hurt the feminist cause, not advance it, because the bourgeois feminists will ultimately side with their economic class. This is very different from a totalistic denunciation of feminism as an ideology. All this talk of “women’s liberation not feminism” is just semantic obfuscation; what it really does is disguise the discomfort many leftist men feel surrounding a revolutionary movement exclusively for women. These revolutionary women did not theorize, organize, and agitate to make men feel more comfortable, but liberate international proletariat, especially the working women of the world.

The other charge that feminism is a form of identity politics is another example of this kind of disingenuous semantic and ideological obfuscation. As discussed in the first part of this series, woman is not an identity, but a material state of being. In The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, Engels explained how the advent of private property and its concentration in male hands, led to the domination of women by men for the purpose of exploiting their reproductive labor so that property could be passed down from the father to the son. Patriarchy and class exist in a symbiosis with one another, the one impossible without the other. And capitalism, despite allowing women to make some gains, still needs to maintain control of women’s reproductive labor to ensure the continuation of the proletarian class. Patriarchy also serves the function of giving working class men an “outlet” for their aggression; rather than directing their rage at the system that exploits them, they are encouraged to direct their rage at women. But again, this is not because woman is an “identity”. A large part of this rage men direct at women is sexual exploitation; prostitution, pornography, sexual slavery. (See Part 2 for a more detailed exploration of the sexual exploitation of women by patriarchy and capitalism.) Female biology, the state of being female, and of having a female body is inseparable from this oppression and exploitation. Thomas Sankara said of this double oppression of women:

“Women’s fate is bound up with that of an exploited male. However, this solidarity must not blind us in looking at the specific situation faced by womenfolk in our society. It is true that the woman worker and simple man are exploited economically, but the worker wife is also condemned further to silence by her worker husband. This is the same method used by men to dominate other men! The idea was crafted that certain men, by virtue of their family origin and birth, or by ‘divine rights’, were superior to others.”[3]

Being born female is a life sentence to, at “best”, second class citizenship, and, at worst, a life full of the worst kind of slavery and exploitation. Women make up not a class, but a caste; it is possible to move out of the class one belongs to, but caste is something one is born into and can never escape. Feminism aims at the emancipation of the female caste; it is not some kind of abstract identitarian movement. We must ask, would those who denounce feminism as identity politics also say the same thing about black liberation, or national liberation movements? Certainly some will, but one has to suspect these would be a minority. If anything, the cult of the ideal “worker” worshipped by the class reductionist left is an example of actual identity politics, the way it fetishizes and elevates a kind of archetypal industrial worker as being the symbol of the working class. This kind of crude class reductionism poses a far greater danger to the left than feminism ever can, even if feminism were an example of “identity politics”. Again, these denunciations serve more to conceal the discomfort of leftist men than anything else. Working class men, and leftist men are still men, and unless they actively combat patriarchal-capitalist socialization, they are going to be doing more to support the status quo than the revolution. If solidarity with working class women cannot persuade them to support the feminist movement, then perhaps they ought to support it as it is ultimately in their interest to do so. Like the racist white worker who thinks himself superior to his black comrade, capitalism will not hesitate to sacrifice the chauvinist male worker on the pyre of profit and accumulation.

Leftist anti-feminism has really reached its peak in recent years with the rabid attacks on radical feminism and radical feminists. All the crass arguments hurled against feminism are also hurled against radical feminism, but the vitriol is taken to a whole higher level of viciousness. There are also other accusations reserved just for attacking radical feminism besides the usual ones; that radical feminism is elitist, white supremacist, “transphobic”, moralist, “whorephobic”, and even fascist! Again, these arguments show a shocking level of ignorance when it comes to history and theory. Like the Marxist feminists of the earlier twentieth century, radical feminism emerged not as an anti-leftist movement, but as a movement to push the left to its highest level of theoretical and revolutionary potential. Carol Hanisch, the radical feminist who, among other things, coined the phrase “the personal is political”, and organized the 1968 Miss America protests, said in a speech that the radical feminist movement she helped to found and develop was inspired by Mao and the Cultural Revolution. In the same speech, she said:

“To me the Cultural Revolution seems a continuation of the Revolution: a means to make it go deeper so that it didn’t get caught in the bureaucracy and complacency that sets in once power is won militarily and a new group of people — including opportunists in the revolutionary movement itself — have a stake in creating the new status quo. It’s a continuation of the process by which the masses of working people, including women and minorities, take total political, economic and social power. It’s the next step to achieving real communism; that is, a society completely devoid of class, including that of sex and race. We considered sexism and racism more than just a tradition of behavior or a bad or ignorant habit. Being materialists (in the Marxist sense), we asked, ‘Who benefits?’”[4]

Other radical feminists like Shulamith Firestone and Andrea Dworkin sought to apply dialectical materialism exclusively to understanding the oppression and exploitation faced by women. Rather than giving into “biological determinism”, or “sexual fascism”, as their critics claimed, and still claim, they built upon the work of Engels, Kollontai, and others and deepened it; their analyses did for patriarchy what Marx did for capitalism. We owe much of the newfound understanding of pre-patriarchal human society, and “lost” women’s history to their diligent analysis and research. The radical feminist frustration with much of the left was not, and should not be considered an expression of anti-leftist sentiment, but understood for what it really was, a deep-seated frustration with the chauvinism and entitlement exhibited by many male leftists, as well as the domination of leftist groups by these men, and the way women in these groups were very often silenced and abused (something that still happens today, as shown by the rape “scandals” in the UK Socialist Workers Party, and in the Australian section of the Committee for a Workers’ International). And just like Marx is constantly subjected to ridiculous attacks by people who have never read him, so are the radical feminists (the erroneous claim that Dworkin said “all sex is rape” is one of the most popular of these distortions). Except radical feminists are not just being attacked by the right, the way Marx is, but also by the left. What it really shows is that the more direct an attack on existing power structures is, the more wildly insane and savage the counter-attack.

At the end of the day, anti-feminist “leftists” simply betray an utter lack of understanding of both revolutionary socialist theory and practice. Every revolutionary socialist has recognized that for the revolution to succeed, women need to be mass mobilized; even after the socialist republic has been established, this mobilization must continue and deepen for socialism to take root and flourish. Women are more than decoration for the socialist revolution, they must be active participants in every aspect of building the socialist society. Mao and Castro were especially astute at recognizing this; both China (at least until the Dengist era) and Cuba have been active proponents of women’s liberation in all spheres of society. Marx himself said, “Anybody who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without the feminine ferment. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex…”[5] This statement can and should also be applied to socialist organizations; the most effective socialist groups are the ones in which women are not just active at every level, but equal and valued contributors to the organization’s development and practice. Those “socialists” who disregard, undervalue, or outright reject feminism do so at their own peril.