The state of the left

Workerism and identity politics.

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Greens can do better.

And here’s a challenge: I think we have to hold two ideas in our minds at the same time:

(a) “the salvation of the left is to transition from Red to Green” . . . has some validity

(b) “neither Left nor Right but out in front” . . . also has some validity

Some of our Key Values could be indentified with leftism. Some could be interpreted as transcending leftism.

Traditional leftism has been workerist, progressivist (i.e., laudatory of “progress and development”), and universalist (socialist economics everywhere, always). An eco-communitarian worldview should be free of, beyond those, delusions.

It’s a little complex. We want to influence the left but we also want to transcend the left.

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Anyway, on those days when you’re mostly just tired of leftism, you might enjoy reading a funny-trenchant-critical screed like:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/bob-black-anarchy-after-leftism

The author is too anarchist and not enough communitarian for my taste, but he does sock it to Murray Bookchin with great insight and pizzazz:

Disposing of Bookchin’s ideological and rhetorical rubbish gives Bob Black the chance to develop the grounds for a more general attack on the remaining vestiges of leftism while he’s at it. Cleaning house of leftism is a much bigger task than dealing with one man’s leftist career. So in one sense, by drawing attention to his ineffectual polemic, Bookchin has made himself an excuse for the beginning of a much larger process of critique, a process that will undoubtedly continue to unfold with increasing militance into the coming century. It will require awareness and effort from all of us to finish this task, but it will be done.