“What Is the Left?” … and: What Have We Done?

https://sawicky.substack.com/p/what-is-the-left

. . . it is the Working Families Party, Our Revolution, Justice Democrats, Progressive Democrats of America, and a faction inside the Democratic Socialists of America. It is Bernie Sanders, campaigning on behalf of Summer Lee in Pittsburgh, Greg Casar in Texas, and others, to expand “The Squad.” It’s publications such as In These Times, The Nation, The New Republic, Jacobin, and Dissent.

That’s Max’s left.

I can think of four perfectly valid leftist orientations:

1) left-liberalism prioritizes electing Democrats;

2) social democracy wants to transition this country (and all countries) toward the kind of social support system found in Norway, Finland, and New Zealand;

3) Marxist democratic socialism wants more than that, maintaining that exploitation will persist until the commanding heights of the economy, i.e., the bulk of society’s productive assets, are owned and controlled socially;

4) Green eco-socialism seeks a wholescale transformation toward an eventual post-capitalist, post-industrial, post-statist bioregional new/old reality.

People tend to slide up the scale as they age. My friend Max and I were 3’ers when we were in college together. Max now has become impatient with 3’ers. Same with Bernie Sanders.

(Orientations 1, 2, and 3 constitute the traditional left that dates back almost two hundred years. Orientation number 4 is the new paradigm vision that emerged from the Sixties ferment. It emerged after Max had solidified his life trajectory.)

* * * *

People tend to drift up the scale as they age because as they have less and less time left they want to feel like they’ve accomplished something.

* * * *

If you consider yourself a leftist … which of the four orientations you embrace is essentially a dispositional thing.

In college Max and I thought it was pretty fogey to age and lose a passion for transformation. We vowed we wouldn’t. But Max wound up working much more within the system than I did. That tends to slide you up the scale.

And, in a conventional sense, Max did accomplish more than I did. His work helped move the system a quarter of an inch. Mine helped move the system less than an eighth of an inch.

It became clear to me that the system is like an ocean liner that has such enormous momentum and inertia that movement can only be accomplished in tiny increments. My disposition is such that accomplishing a tiny increment within the conventional sphere (with a lot of effort) is unsatisfying.

We visionaries accomplished less but retained more passion. To me it’s a personal quality of life issue. Max might disdain it as selfish. But it’s just a different project.

* * * *

The different orientations have different gauges of accomplishment. The 1’ers elected a President of the United States, a leader of the free world. That’s something.

Max’s efforts moved the system a quarter of inch. That’s something.

My efforts went into opening pathways. We Green transformationalists constructed twenty-five feet of the pathway that eventually will stretch a thousand miles. At two thousand steps to the mile, the greening of society will be a journey of two million steps altogether. In our short span of time we took ten steps.

Max would find that unsatisfying. The work is so marginal, the accomplishment is so little. But I think it’s something. And it’s more fun.