You’ve written a eulogy for a revolution that never really tried to fight. You’ve diagnosed the disease, mapped every malignant cell of the rot, and then sat down in the waiting room to let it run its course. We have failed, you say. We are ghosts, you say. And yet, here you are, still writing, still thinking, still feeling that ember of rage in your chest. That’s not failure, that’s an opportunity.
The so-called "Left" is not dead; it’s just been convinced that playing fair is the only way to win. It has been pacified, self-neutered, and trapped in an endless cycle of moral hand-wringing while the right builds its empire brick by brick. And instead of organizing, strategizing, and imposing consequences on power, we get... this. A beautifully written, poetic surrender note.
But here’s the thing: power does not care about your resignation. It only fears your action.
You talk about how capitalism eats everything. How it adapts. How it morphs. That is true. Capitalism is the Borg, it assimilates, repackages, and sells revolution back to you with a 30% markup. But if capitalism can adapt, so can we. If the right can build institutions, so can we. If fascists can carve out spaces of power through relentless, strategic, unapologetic force, we can do the same.
The problem isn’t that revolution is impossible. The problem is that we stopped fighting like we meant it.
You say anarchism has no vision? Then write one and make people believe in it.
You say we don’t build? Then build something worth defending.
You say we’ve been co-opted? Then stop waiting to be invited to the table, flip the fucking thing over.
You lament how the system absorbs every act of rebellion and turns it into a commodity. So what? The answer is to create acts that it can’t absorb. Acts that impose real costs. Acts that don’t fit neatly into a marketing campaign. You want to fight capitalism? Then you have to make it feel pain.
History is not kind to people who wait. Every gain that workers, women, people of color, and marginalized communities have ever won has been taken by force. We forget that. We forget that the weekend, the vote, civil rights, bodily autonomy, none of it was handed down from above. It was ripped from the system’s grip by people who refused to sit around and pontificate about their own insignificance.
Yes, the right builds institutions. Yes, it organizes. Yes, it deploys its forces with surgical precision while we sit around making memes. But that is not an excuse to lie down and die. That is a blueprint.
What you call failure, I call dormancy. And dormancy only lasts until the right spark ignites it.
So I ask you: Are you ready to fight? Are we prepared to stop getting mired by the weight of imperfect ideas, and start crafting the plan for Project 2026?
I do find the essay a bit amusing, since it's so euro/US centric inspired of its half-hearted mentions of the USSR's demise (which isn't nearly as clean as people make it out to be) and total lack of acknowledgement on the movements in South America, Africa, and southeast Asia.
Every US-white leftist shitposter knows about the zaps, they know about catalonia, they know all that.
What they don't care to know is the people around them in person or the organizations fighting tooth and nail like we should be here in the "western world".
I don't disagree with a lot of this, but I think it falls into black and white thinking at times that is simply inaccurate.
For example you speak of anarchists as "never building, never creating" and say that we act as though the slogan is enough to bring about change - but that completely ignores the reality of over a century of small, local, decentralized ACTION in the form of mutual aid. Just because anarchists haven't taken power and formed an actual state (which would be rather a contradiction in terms) doesn't mean we haven't done countless things and impacted countless lives.
I think your realism has slid into a form of self-flagellation that is actually disconnected from reality. Not that your assessment of our future prospects isn't correct, but your conclusion of how we got here is (not correct).
To expand a bit more on this, I was a full time revolutionary activist for 7 years, and I finally quit because I had to face the reality that all my efforts in the world (actual organizing, not just talking) simply weren't having an effect on the wider society.
The problem isn't the failure of the left. Many of us have literally done everything we could, devoted years of our lives, our freedom, and even our very existence to the struggle for true change. The reason why that has failed is because most of humanity DO NOT WANT TO CHANGE. A huge swath of society is willfully ignorant, narcissistic, bigoted and selfish, believing in hierarchy and domination because they truly believe themselves to be superior to others. And much of the rest are wounded children in adult bodies, wanting to be led and refusing to take any responsibility for doing what is best for humanity as a whole.
Yes, those same people are exploited, brainwashed, uneducated and traumatized, and that's not their fault. But what IS their fault is the fact that they continually choose to act to destroy themselves and everyone around them. Our entire modern culture is deeply diseased and our psyches have been infected with a psycho-spiritual sickness, and those few who sincerely do the work to free themselves from it's grip simply aren't enough to turn the tide, to steer the human herd away from the cliff it's dragging us all towards.
You're literally blaming this fate on those who have tried the hardest to change it.
Ditto to everything you’ve said. These same ideas came to mind when I read the article. I’ve never encountered organizations that acknowledge deep human history and recognize our current arrangement as such an extreme outlier. True opposition means understanding that we are no different from those who organized society differently for 99.99999% of history. Like them, we can walk away from systems that fail to improve our lives or make us less free. A society that deprives people of life and liberty isn’t a society at all. Those who aren’t better off within it have no reason to stay—they should walk away and refuse to be exploited.
Great comment. Leftism will always fail because it is an idealistic, utopic project. Given all it's flaws and weaknesses the human animal is incapable of bringing a utopia into being and history shows time and again how every attempt to do so leads to a hell on earth. "Another world is possible" yeah maybe, but in reality there is and will only ever be the world of the here and now that we inhabit. We have to address the world as it is, not as we think it ought to be. The drive for a socialist utopia led to Stalin's Russia, mass starvation, gulags and so on. I remember leftists in the eighties justifying what went on in communist Eastern Europe and Russia as a 'necessary' stage on the way to a proper socialist society.
Oh and another reason leftists always lose is down to the amount of time spent arguing and squabbling among themselves. Ironic that Leftists are invariably incapable of putting differences aside in order to work together for a common purpose.
As to your last point, that's a fair criticism when it happens but that only ever describes a certain section of leftists (the ideological fundamentalists). I've been a leftist my entire adult life and I was active in organizing for many years, and while my politics were revolutionary my entire organization constantly worked in coalitions with other leftists. So it's simply not true for all of us, or even most.
I've always felt that a key part of being "a leftist" is our ability to self-reflect and self-critique with the intent to always be doing better.
It is worth noting that these two keystones are deliberately gutted in 'leftist' stuff in the US, which is what inspires the ideological fundamentalism and strict labeling (I.E. "I'm an Ego Anarchist or a Reform Socialist" or some such) which just encourages (mostly white mascs) to putter around and do nothing while constantly purity testing themselves and others.
We will never be perfect, but we can be better. So let's screw up and scrape our knees as we struggle towards a better world.
I really like this perspective! It really does seem like the willingness to self-reflect and self-critique are keys tools for avoiding fundamentalism, and thus irrelevance.
Perhaps leftism is too utopian for the CURRENT (toxic) state of humanity. But it's important to remember that at it's core leftism is seeking a return to the old ways of living and relating before humanity took this dark turn. Because if you look at all of human existence as a species, we lived in a communistic way for 99.999999% of it. And obviously successfully too, or we wouldn't have evolved and survived over the past half a million years.
It's only been in the past few thousand years that humanity has "experimented" with large settlements, agriculture, empire and domination - and in each case that it's been tried, it's quickly failed (relative to the length of time indigenous cultures remained stable, which extends back to the last ice age in many cases). So in truth, it's the conservative ideals of hierarchy, empire, and the nation state that is utopian, creating constant wars and famines and instability everywhere those things have been tried.
Hell, capitalism is responsible for a freaking mass extinction event (the 6th in all of our planets' history), and is putting the very future of our survival as a species at risk. Yes it's been dominant while it's been around (because it's designed to eliminate any threat to itself very effectively) but as far as systems go it is already on it's last legs and it's only been a few hundred years.
So I would argue that the problem isn't that leftism is too utopian, it's that this culture is too far gone to return to the utopian norm that humanity had previously always known, without first experiencing a collapse to free it's stranglehold on our species.
I bet that was really cathartic to write. I bet it feels really nice to finally say it. But doing nothing? Really? Or rather: Why?
Why spread the doom with nothing to combat it? You're painting a subjective picture that actually isn't factual.
We're out here growing the regenerative gardens already. We're getting ready too, under the surface. Just because you haven't been used to seeing the Alternative, the Next Thing, because you've been caught up in tearing down without seeing the need to build doesn't mean that everyone else has been making the same choice.
We are out here creating fertile, drought resistant soil to feed us all. We are gathering people with abilities that can withstand it all. We are not putting our faith in a corrupt, capitalist political system and instead are living in a parallel society.
You'll find us if the need comes. Look for green forest in places where trees did not use to grow. They can cut down our old sacred spaces, we will build new ones on top of their toxic heaps while mourning, healthily, and generating ever more resistance. We are like the gentle moss growing in places you don't expect.
Stop looking at their circus. They're trying to make you feel despair. If you don't dare to dream you won't have the energy to survive. Don't fall into their traps anymore. Democracy is dead, that's why you're an anarchist in the first place. Because you know better. Don't feed the beast.
There are so many of us. The capacity to feed others grows and grows. It won't be perfect if we have to be an opposition to the status quo, but it will be good enough. We have doctors, we have scientists, we have biologists and do many others. And the rest of us are gardening and planting and there will be enough.
It’s good that you are self aware that you have not been actually doing something of long lasting change, but please do not mistake yours, and others experiences that are similar, for the whole representation of our revolutionary course. I def agree that collectively we can be doing more…but there are so many of us out here that are organizing and creating new systems and we need help.
You want a revolution? Time to let go of the conveniences and luxuries gives you: no more going to the bar/club. Stop overindulging. Stop contributing to toxic industries. Stop buying shit you don’t need. Grow some food. Go natural. The thing that will destroy the system, is reconnecting to nature. Healing our relationship to her and each other. When we do that, we will have everything we need and will not need the system anymore.
You want a revolution? Know your neighbors. Learn discipline and reject the quick dopamine. Heal yourself. Take charge of your own life. Then find us when you are ready to build the new world. Stop making memes and zines, make documents and content. Inspire others with solutions, not doom and gloom, we’re already aware of what’s happening, it’s time for action. Learn about your bioregion: the land, the plants, animals, water, weather patterns of your NATURAL environment.
And let’s forget the word revolution. When people hear that, they expect some dystopian movie ending where the good guys win and everything changes in an instant and you feel good. That’s not how it’ll look like. This is a long game. The changes and wins will be subtle. We have to be consistent and make this a lifestyle. We have to build our communities, grow our own food, and not depend on the system. We have to connect with the elders and the youth, teach and learn. We have to change our mindsets, and be ok with being uncomfortable and not taking the easy way out. Let’s be real, no single protest, or any amount of protesting was ever going to change our world. Reality check: your current lifestyle will not exist without the system. Once you realize that and are ready to make changes to your lifestyle, you are ready for the real revolution.
And one last, unfortunate reality: there are many things happening currently that we cannot stop. Some aspects of our current reality was decided by greedy people decades ago and we are watching those consequences play out now. We will lose a lot and it seems unstoppable. As activists, we will experience lots of grief over and over through our life as we watch our planet and people die…
But ✨
We are now the cultivators of our future. The power IS in our hands, and now there is a huge power shift. We are sculpting the world and we have to do so mindfully and intentionally. We now have the youth looking up to us and are counting on us. There are future generations that will inherit what we leave them. So if you can’t continue forward for yourself or your peers, do it for the youth and our descendants. Let’s not repeat the cycle selfishness and lack of stewardship that our elders did for us.
So my experience in organizing is new, but this feels like a perfect example of the very thing you're complaining about. It is our responsibility as a collective to rise to the occasion and support each other (an uphill battle) but it is also our individual responsibility to cement our values, fight for them, and create a future we can imagine being happy in. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. what the fuck else do you want to do?
While I completely agree with the sentiment behind this piece, I have found that the issue is we're trying to fix global issues, without even bothering to check what our local communities could benefit from most (and 'local' is subjective as it can mean the community outside your front door, or the community you relate to the most). No one can solve every problem, and that is why we are losing. Because we all see the millions of issues and become stuck, unable to help in any of them. The greatest thing I have learned this year (and yes, I did only learn it this year, so no shade on anyone who hasn't learned it yet), is that we each need to choose one thing to focus on. If everyone focused on improving one thing in their community, we would strengthen and become unstoppable.
And yes, perhaps it is all meaningless with AI and war on the horizon - in fact, I generally believe everything is meaningless when you look at the big picture). But that's why we need to look at the small picture. Can you improve one person's life by collecting their groceries, sharing a skill, just talking to them to lessen the loneliness? If we stop believing that focusing on individual humans is worth doing, then yes, we have lost.
We are all tired, chiefly because of the lies, greed, ignorance, domination, violence and failure of humans to see the reality of Nature. AI is just another techno gadget that will distract us from reality. Our problems are serious, but they can be solved, if we want to.
I am not an anarchist, but to be fair, most people do not understand classical anarchism. I would recommend as a start, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902), a collection of anthropological essays by Russian naturalist and anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin.
You might be surprised what he writes, chiefly that cooperation is the norm. Not competition. Humans are the one species that fail to understand this important, and I would add, essential, ingredient to successful adaptation.
Leftist politics are the politics of affluence, of luxury. When the luxury leaves a model, the left is lost and then left behind.
All this too will pass. "Progress" as a linear trajectory is and always has been a myth. In all things there is only ever the constant rise and fall, ebb and flow, birth and death.
These tragic narratives are also a luxury. Soon enough we will have neither the energy, the time nor the patience for tragic narratives. Life will become very real again, and we will be busy just getting on with things.
To your first paragraph, I call bullshit. Leftist politics at their core are simply the desire to return to the freedom, autonomy, care and cooperation that humanity has known for 99.999999% of it's existence as a species. The systems of empire, control and domination that we currently live under are extreme aberrations that have only existed for a mere blip in human history. And the cycles of rise and fall that you describe have only ever been true for those aberrations (so-called "civilizations").
This is only true if your idea of "history" extends only to so-called civilized cultures over the past few thousand years. Expand your view to the literally countless cultures who such "history" prefers to ignore, and a very different picture emerges.
Thank you. I am tired of this stubborn idea that "humans can never have peace" like it's true. What, because Europe hasn't managed it in the past 2000 years that makes it an impossible pipe dream?
I wish people would engage with the idea of happiness. We say "you can't please everyone" and because we say it we assume it's true.
But we could. People just want a good life. It's not that hard.
(In case someone reading this goes to the obvious question: hello, I'm a volunteer farmer)
A good combat for the whole 'war is inevitable' eurocentric white man burden view is that it was only expansionist Imperial powers that went out of their way to force other groups of people into war.
Historically across the world, great effort was made to avoid any kind of conflict and when it did arise it was more ceremonial than the callus bloodbath that 'civilized realms' threw thousands of people into for a tiny bit more land on their maps.
My personal view of utopia, when based on this actual current reality is a slight change to the human rights (so that they include, basically, the basic needs and a fair share) plus the kind of regenerative farming that truly makes the earth around you feel like Paradise (sorry, I'm deeply in love with a thriving permaculture garden) (also abolish borders, I don't care about nations, sorry not sorry)
If everyone had enough, like that, if everyone was also helped through the generational trauma of living *like this* for endless generations, then I don't (won't) believe that war would be a thing. War for what? You want to take your neighbours potatoes and leave them starving? Sounds like you need to go talk about your emotions with a choice of free therapists. Maybe at a spa or something. While the rest of us celebrate because it's ... a time of year and our drought and flood resistant varied crops have yet again not failed beyond a negligible percentage.
By the “Left” do you mean actual Leftists (communists) or do you mean Democrats, who are neoliberal capitalists? Because there has never been a single instance where an American Communist Party has been within 500 ft of elected government
The author is doom-posting since they find it hard to volunteer at their local community center or library where they might have to interact witb icky poor brown people.. They'd rather complain about how "Da Left" is useless and weak and deserves to be beaten when they didn't actually do much.
It comes across as a very privileged view of somebody who isn't terrified they'll get deported tonight.
So many revolutions in my lifetime: I was born in 1953 in New Zealand Aotearoa.
Cultural revolutions, political revolutions (China, Iran, USSR, Eastern Europe, Islamic State etc), technological revolutions and more.
Yet almost none of these revolutions were led by Left Revolutionaries. Most off them were generated within capitalism or at least within capitalist economies; some were even intended to restore capitalism in formerly "socialist" countries. I've never been a Left Revolutionary but I really do understand the pain and futility you feel.
Back in the 1970s, I realised that almost all the progress toward a fair society had been made by social democrats and liberals, often working together. My generation built on the work of the First Labour government, 1935-49. Our postwar generations brought us political reforms: nuclear free NZ, proportional representation (MMP), the Waitangi Tribunal. Also, social reforms: sexual freedoms, Accident Compensation, drug law reform, women's liberation... trade rules were switched away from protectionisn toward liberal free trade. Pharmac purchases almost all the pharmaceuticals used by our health system: it's a monopoly that serves the public interest.
We still have opposition and we meet with ridicule when we propose free dental care or a wealth tax. It's not perfect here, it never will be, and of course the whole world financial and economic systems may collapse from internal stress or from climate change.
In the meantime, the Left Revolutionary parties and thinkers offer us nothing of any use. We social democrats and liberals will stick to our principles and do what we can. Thanks, but no thanks.
Look, I don't know anything, I'm a high school dropout who hasn't read all the tomes of theory, but I have a lot of lived experience, just hear me out:
China uses capital markets. But at any time, the state can seize and nationalize the assets of a corporation and tell the entire ownership and staff "thanks for your work, here's your severance, now go build something else." This is actually part of why the Westerners screech so loudly about the surveillance state and government overreach, because they're simping for actual capitalism, which has built a far-more-horrifying panopticon completely free of public control or oversight, renting it to Nazis just like IBM did last century.
Capital markets are just tools. They're extremely powerful feedback loops and should be used with care. It's "-ism" when you dogmatically use them for everything without regulation or any kind of discernment. For example, using capital markets for healthcare is like using a chainsaw to get a splinter out of your finger. But I'm not going to ban chainsaws just because some people decide to be chainsaw-ists. China uses all modern tools as appropriate for the job.
I reiterate my lack of education and clarify that I'm not trying to make the case that modern China exemplifies communism. But with my understanding of how they use capital markets, I would not call them capitalists.
So the fight, for you, was all about your own ego? About feeling good? Getting to make a change that helped you think your life was worth living? Fuck off. If you even feel like you have a choice to engage with this struggle or not, you're never going to be a part of it. "Buh buh the true left would be alpha and win every fight buh buh buh BUY MY BOOK." Might as well crawl into a grave right now! Why wait? You're not a relic, you're a lifelong cosplayer with no resolve or courage.
I think this is healthy. The left should start by ceasing to glamorize weakness. Let me give you a hint, that doesn’t work out well when you have to actually fight an enemy. Also, no movement can ever, ever afford to live in delusion and denial of reality. A good movement has to be a truth seeking movement. It has to update and adapt its empirical assumptions as the world changes. And it has to acknowledge fundamental truths, however inconvenient.
No; I’m one guy, and have little power to make a difference one way or another. That said, I wish I had done more early on, if nothing else than at least to assuage the regret and guilt I feel now and not have to wonder if I was a coward.
I think it’s unlikely to happen because (1) it is painful to admit you are wrong and confront your friends, and humans rarely embrace pain willingly; (2) it hasn’t happened yet, even though there has been ample opportunity for it. I thought it would happen after Trump got elected the first time. We frittered away the time and power we had then.
Revolution comes from desperation. It is bound to happen spontaneusly and, in a way, unplanned. It fails unless there's already a well-known, decentralized, intellectual foundation above which to build the following system. All attempts at changing the status-quo are destined to be flickers while there's no clear common goal besides opposition. To act now is not to wait for everything to crumble and a so called "revolution" to happen, but to lay out the path for when it does.
I think your point about organizing around the idea of ensuring UBI as a solution for AI displacement is a good one. It’s a tangible goal. That’s what the left always lacked. It’s asking for too many things and lacks a cohesive message. I think organizing around UBI and Universal Healthcare is enough. Just two things.
Wrong emphasis: The Left hasn't failed the world, the Left has been succesfully bashed into pulp by a main stream media that has convinced its halfwitted audience that anything to the left of Genghis Khan is communism and hence shifted the Overton Window so far to the right that it destroys proper debate.
This was always the neoliberal plan and the Left were not prepared for it.
You’ve written a eulogy for a revolution that never really tried to fight. You’ve diagnosed the disease, mapped every malignant cell of the rot, and then sat down in the waiting room to let it run its course. We have failed, you say. We are ghosts, you say. And yet, here you are, still writing, still thinking, still feeling that ember of rage in your chest. That’s not failure, that’s an opportunity.
The so-called "Left" is not dead; it’s just been convinced that playing fair is the only way to win. It has been pacified, self-neutered, and trapped in an endless cycle of moral hand-wringing while the right builds its empire brick by brick. And instead of organizing, strategizing, and imposing consequences on power, we get... this. A beautifully written, poetic surrender note.
But here’s the thing: power does not care about your resignation. It only fears your action.
You talk about how capitalism eats everything. How it adapts. How it morphs. That is true. Capitalism is the Borg, it assimilates, repackages, and sells revolution back to you with a 30% markup. But if capitalism can adapt, so can we. If the right can build institutions, so can we. If fascists can carve out spaces of power through relentless, strategic, unapologetic force, we can do the same.
The problem isn’t that revolution is impossible. The problem is that we stopped fighting like we meant it.
You say anarchism has no vision? Then write one and make people believe in it.
You say we don’t build? Then build something worth defending.
You say we’ve been co-opted? Then stop waiting to be invited to the table, flip the fucking thing over.
You lament how the system absorbs every act of rebellion and turns it into a commodity. So what? The answer is to create acts that it can’t absorb. Acts that impose real costs. Acts that don’t fit neatly into a marketing campaign. You want to fight capitalism? Then you have to make it feel pain.
History is not kind to people who wait. Every gain that workers, women, people of color, and marginalized communities have ever won has been taken by force. We forget that. We forget that the weekend, the vote, civil rights, bodily autonomy, none of it was handed down from above. It was ripped from the system’s grip by people who refused to sit around and pontificate about their own insignificance.
Yes, the right builds institutions. Yes, it organizes. Yes, it deploys its forces with surgical precision while we sit around making memes. But that is not an excuse to lie down and die. That is a blueprint.
What you call failure, I call dormancy. And dormancy only lasts until the right spark ignites it.
So I ask you: Are you ready to fight? Are we prepared to stop getting mired by the weight of imperfect ideas, and start crafting the plan for Project 2026?
I do find the essay a bit amusing, since it's so euro/US centric inspired of its half-hearted mentions of the USSR's demise (which isn't nearly as clean as people make it out to be) and total lack of acknowledgement on the movements in South America, Africa, and southeast Asia.
Every US-white leftist shitposter knows about the zaps, they know about catalonia, they know all that.
What they don't care to know is the people around them in person or the organizations fighting tooth and nail like we should be here in the "western world".
I don't disagree with a lot of this, but I think it falls into black and white thinking at times that is simply inaccurate.
For example you speak of anarchists as "never building, never creating" and say that we act as though the slogan is enough to bring about change - but that completely ignores the reality of over a century of small, local, decentralized ACTION in the form of mutual aid. Just because anarchists haven't taken power and formed an actual state (which would be rather a contradiction in terms) doesn't mean we haven't done countless things and impacted countless lives.
I think your realism has slid into a form of self-flagellation that is actually disconnected from reality. Not that your assessment of our future prospects isn't correct, but your conclusion of how we got here is (not correct).
To expand a bit more on this, I was a full time revolutionary activist for 7 years, and I finally quit because I had to face the reality that all my efforts in the world (actual organizing, not just talking) simply weren't having an effect on the wider society.
The problem isn't the failure of the left. Many of us have literally done everything we could, devoted years of our lives, our freedom, and even our very existence to the struggle for true change. The reason why that has failed is because most of humanity DO NOT WANT TO CHANGE. A huge swath of society is willfully ignorant, narcissistic, bigoted and selfish, believing in hierarchy and domination because they truly believe themselves to be superior to others. And much of the rest are wounded children in adult bodies, wanting to be led and refusing to take any responsibility for doing what is best for humanity as a whole.
Yes, those same people are exploited, brainwashed, uneducated and traumatized, and that's not their fault. But what IS their fault is the fact that they continually choose to act to destroy themselves and everyone around them. Our entire modern culture is deeply diseased and our psyches have been infected with a psycho-spiritual sickness, and those few who sincerely do the work to free themselves from it's grip simply aren't enough to turn the tide, to steer the human herd away from the cliff it's dragging us all towards.
You're literally blaming this fate on those who have tried the hardest to change it.
Ditto to everything you’ve said. These same ideas came to mind when I read the article. I’ve never encountered organizations that acknowledge deep human history and recognize our current arrangement as such an extreme outlier. True opposition means understanding that we are no different from those who organized society differently for 99.99999% of history. Like them, we can walk away from systems that fail to improve our lives or make us less free. A society that deprives people of life and liberty isn’t a society at all. Those who aren’t better off within it have no reason to stay—they should walk away and refuse to be exploited.
Great comment. Leftism will always fail because it is an idealistic, utopic project. Given all it's flaws and weaknesses the human animal is incapable of bringing a utopia into being and history shows time and again how every attempt to do so leads to a hell on earth. "Another world is possible" yeah maybe, but in reality there is and will only ever be the world of the here and now that we inhabit. We have to address the world as it is, not as we think it ought to be. The drive for a socialist utopia led to Stalin's Russia, mass starvation, gulags and so on. I remember leftists in the eighties justifying what went on in communist Eastern Europe and Russia as a 'necessary' stage on the way to a proper socialist society.
Oh and another reason leftists always lose is down to the amount of time spent arguing and squabbling among themselves. Ironic that Leftists are invariably incapable of putting differences aside in order to work together for a common purpose.
As to your last point, that's a fair criticism when it happens but that only ever describes a certain section of leftists (the ideological fundamentalists). I've been a leftist my entire adult life and I was active in organizing for many years, and while my politics were revolutionary my entire organization constantly worked in coalitions with other leftists. So it's simply not true for all of us, or even most.
I've always felt that a key part of being "a leftist" is our ability to self-reflect and self-critique with the intent to always be doing better.
It is worth noting that these two keystones are deliberately gutted in 'leftist' stuff in the US, which is what inspires the ideological fundamentalism and strict labeling (I.E. "I'm an Ego Anarchist or a Reform Socialist" or some such) which just encourages (mostly white mascs) to putter around and do nothing while constantly purity testing themselves and others.
We will never be perfect, but we can be better. So let's screw up and scrape our knees as we struggle towards a better world.
I really like this perspective! It really does seem like the willingness to self-reflect and self-critique are keys tools for avoiding fundamentalism, and thus irrelevance.
Perhaps leftism is too utopian for the CURRENT (toxic) state of humanity. But it's important to remember that at it's core leftism is seeking a return to the old ways of living and relating before humanity took this dark turn. Because if you look at all of human existence as a species, we lived in a communistic way for 99.999999% of it. And obviously successfully too, or we wouldn't have evolved and survived over the past half a million years.
It's only been in the past few thousand years that humanity has "experimented" with large settlements, agriculture, empire and domination - and in each case that it's been tried, it's quickly failed (relative to the length of time indigenous cultures remained stable, which extends back to the last ice age in many cases). So in truth, it's the conservative ideals of hierarchy, empire, and the nation state that is utopian, creating constant wars and famines and instability everywhere those things have been tried.
Hell, capitalism is responsible for a freaking mass extinction event (the 6th in all of our planets' history), and is putting the very future of our survival as a species at risk. Yes it's been dominant while it's been around (because it's designed to eliminate any threat to itself very effectively) but as far as systems go it is already on it's last legs and it's only been a few hundred years.
So I would argue that the problem isn't that leftism is too utopian, it's that this culture is too far gone to return to the utopian norm that humanity had previously always known, without first experiencing a collapse to free it's stranglehold on our species.
I bet that was really cathartic to write. I bet it feels really nice to finally say it. But doing nothing? Really? Or rather: Why?
Why spread the doom with nothing to combat it? You're painting a subjective picture that actually isn't factual.
We're out here growing the regenerative gardens already. We're getting ready too, under the surface. Just because you haven't been used to seeing the Alternative, the Next Thing, because you've been caught up in tearing down without seeing the need to build doesn't mean that everyone else has been making the same choice.
We are out here creating fertile, drought resistant soil to feed us all. We are gathering people with abilities that can withstand it all. We are not putting our faith in a corrupt, capitalist political system and instead are living in a parallel society.
You'll find us if the need comes. Look for green forest in places where trees did not use to grow. They can cut down our old sacred spaces, we will build new ones on top of their toxic heaps while mourning, healthily, and generating ever more resistance. We are like the gentle moss growing in places you don't expect.
Stop looking at their circus. They're trying to make you feel despair. If you don't dare to dream you won't have the energy to survive. Don't fall into their traps anymore. Democracy is dead, that's why you're an anarchist in the first place. Because you know better. Don't feed the beast.
There are so many of us. The capacity to feed others grows and grows. It won't be perfect if we have to be an opposition to the status quo, but it will be good enough. We have doctors, we have scientists, we have biologists and do many others. And the rest of us are gardening and planting and there will be enough.
It’s good that you are self aware that you have not been actually doing something of long lasting change, but please do not mistake yours, and others experiences that are similar, for the whole representation of our revolutionary course. I def agree that collectively we can be doing more…but there are so many of us out here that are organizing and creating new systems and we need help.
You want a revolution? Time to let go of the conveniences and luxuries gives you: no more going to the bar/club. Stop overindulging. Stop contributing to toxic industries. Stop buying shit you don’t need. Grow some food. Go natural. The thing that will destroy the system, is reconnecting to nature. Healing our relationship to her and each other. When we do that, we will have everything we need and will not need the system anymore.
You want a revolution? Know your neighbors. Learn discipline and reject the quick dopamine. Heal yourself. Take charge of your own life. Then find us when you are ready to build the new world. Stop making memes and zines, make documents and content. Inspire others with solutions, not doom and gloom, we’re already aware of what’s happening, it’s time for action. Learn about your bioregion: the land, the plants, animals, water, weather patterns of your NATURAL environment.
And let’s forget the word revolution. When people hear that, they expect some dystopian movie ending where the good guys win and everything changes in an instant and you feel good. That’s not how it’ll look like. This is a long game. The changes and wins will be subtle. We have to be consistent and make this a lifestyle. We have to build our communities, grow our own food, and not depend on the system. We have to connect with the elders and the youth, teach and learn. We have to change our mindsets, and be ok with being uncomfortable and not taking the easy way out. Let’s be real, no single protest, or any amount of protesting was ever going to change our world. Reality check: your current lifestyle will not exist without the system. Once you realize that and are ready to make changes to your lifestyle, you are ready for the real revolution.
And one last, unfortunate reality: there are many things happening currently that we cannot stop. Some aspects of our current reality was decided by greedy people decades ago and we are watching those consequences play out now. We will lose a lot and it seems unstoppable. As activists, we will experience lots of grief over and over through our life as we watch our planet and people die…
But ✨
We are now the cultivators of our future. The power IS in our hands, and now there is a huge power shift. We are sculpting the world and we have to do so mindfully and intentionally. We now have the youth looking up to us and are counting on us. There are future generations that will inherit what we leave them. So if you can’t continue forward for yourself or your peers, do it for the youth and our descendants. Let’s not repeat the cycle selfishness and lack of stewardship that our elders did for us.
So my experience in organizing is new, but this feels like a perfect example of the very thing you're complaining about. It is our responsibility as a collective to rise to the occasion and support each other (an uphill battle) but it is also our individual responsibility to cement our values, fight for them, and create a future we can imagine being happy in. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. what the fuck else do you want to do?
While I completely agree with the sentiment behind this piece, I have found that the issue is we're trying to fix global issues, without even bothering to check what our local communities could benefit from most (and 'local' is subjective as it can mean the community outside your front door, or the community you relate to the most). No one can solve every problem, and that is why we are losing. Because we all see the millions of issues and become stuck, unable to help in any of them. The greatest thing I have learned this year (and yes, I did only learn it this year, so no shade on anyone who hasn't learned it yet), is that we each need to choose one thing to focus on. If everyone focused on improving one thing in their community, we would strengthen and become unstoppable.
And yes, perhaps it is all meaningless with AI and war on the horizon - in fact, I generally believe everything is meaningless when you look at the big picture). But that's why we need to look at the small picture. Can you improve one person's life by collecting their groceries, sharing a skill, just talking to them to lessen the loneliness? If we stop believing that focusing on individual humans is worth doing, then yes, we have lost.
We are all tired, chiefly because of the lies, greed, ignorance, domination, violence and failure of humans to see the reality of Nature. AI is just another techno gadget that will distract us from reality. Our problems are serious, but they can be solved, if we want to.
I am not an anarchist, but to be fair, most people do not understand classical anarchism. I would recommend as a start, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902), a collection of anthropological essays by Russian naturalist and anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin.
You might be surprised what he writes, chiefly that cooperation is the norm. Not competition. Humans are the one species that fail to understand this important, and I would add, essential, ingredient to successful adaptation.
Leftist politics are the politics of affluence, of luxury. When the luxury leaves a model, the left is lost and then left behind.
All this too will pass. "Progress" as a linear trajectory is and always has been a myth. In all things there is only ever the constant rise and fall, ebb and flow, birth and death.
These tragic narratives are also a luxury. Soon enough we will have neither the energy, the time nor the patience for tragic narratives. Life will become very real again, and we will be busy just getting on with things.
To your first paragraph, I call bullshit. Leftist politics at their core are simply the desire to return to the freedom, autonomy, care and cooperation that humanity has known for 99.999999% of it's existence as a species. The systems of empire, control and domination that we currently live under are extreme aberrations that have only existed for a mere blip in human history. And the cycles of rise and fall that you describe have only ever been true for those aberrations (so-called "civilizations").
Actually if you look at history its always consisted of a few people using violence or the threat of to subdue and coerce the majority.
This is only true if your idea of "history" extends only to so-called civilized cultures over the past few thousand years. Expand your view to the literally countless cultures who such "history" prefers to ignore, and a very different picture emerges.
Thank you. I am tired of this stubborn idea that "humans can never have peace" like it's true. What, because Europe hasn't managed it in the past 2000 years that makes it an impossible pipe dream?
I wish people would engage with the idea of happiness. We say "you can't please everyone" and because we say it we assume it's true.
But we could. People just want a good life. It's not that hard.
(In case someone reading this goes to the obvious question: hello, I'm a volunteer farmer)
A good combat for the whole 'war is inevitable' eurocentric white man burden view is that it was only expansionist Imperial powers that went out of their way to force other groups of people into war.
Historically across the world, great effort was made to avoid any kind of conflict and when it did arise it was more ceremonial than the callus bloodbath that 'civilized realms' threw thousands of people into for a tiny bit more land on their maps.
Indeed!
My personal view of utopia, when based on this actual current reality is a slight change to the human rights (so that they include, basically, the basic needs and a fair share) plus the kind of regenerative farming that truly makes the earth around you feel like Paradise (sorry, I'm deeply in love with a thriving permaculture garden) (also abolish borders, I don't care about nations, sorry not sorry)
If everyone had enough, like that, if everyone was also helped through the generational trauma of living *like this* for endless generations, then I don't (won't) believe that war would be a thing. War for what? You want to take your neighbours potatoes and leave them starving? Sounds like you need to go talk about your emotions with a choice of free therapists. Maybe at a spa or something. While the rest of us celebrate because it's ... a time of year and our drought and flood resistant varied crops have yet again not failed beyond a negligible percentage.
Yes that´s a fair point. Thanks for responding.
By the “Left” do you mean actual Leftists (communists) or do you mean Democrats, who are neoliberal capitalists? Because there has never been a single instance where an American Communist Party has been within 500 ft of elected government
You didn't even read the essay did you? Thank you for the 101
While your comment is correct, you should probably read the essay.
The author is doom-posting since they find it hard to volunteer at their local community center or library where they might have to interact witb icky poor brown people.. They'd rather complain about how "Da Left" is useless and weak and deserves to be beaten when they didn't actually do much.
It comes across as a very privileged view of somebody who isn't terrified they'll get deported tonight.
So many revolutions in my lifetime: I was born in 1953 in New Zealand Aotearoa.
Cultural revolutions, political revolutions (China, Iran, USSR, Eastern Europe, Islamic State etc), technological revolutions and more.
Yet almost none of these revolutions were led by Left Revolutionaries. Most off them were generated within capitalism or at least within capitalist economies; some were even intended to restore capitalism in formerly "socialist" countries. I've never been a Left Revolutionary but I really do understand the pain and futility you feel.
Back in the 1970s, I realised that almost all the progress toward a fair society had been made by social democrats and liberals, often working together. My generation built on the work of the First Labour government, 1935-49. Our postwar generations brought us political reforms: nuclear free NZ, proportional representation (MMP), the Waitangi Tribunal. Also, social reforms: sexual freedoms, Accident Compensation, drug law reform, women's liberation... trade rules were switched away from protectionisn toward liberal free trade. Pharmac purchases almost all the pharmaceuticals used by our health system: it's a monopoly that serves the public interest.
We still have opposition and we meet with ridicule when we propose free dental care or a wealth tax. It's not perfect here, it never will be, and of course the whole world financial and economic systems may collapse from internal stress or from climate change.
In the meantime, the Left Revolutionary parties and thinkers offer us nothing of any use. We social democrats and liberals will stick to our principles and do what we can. Thanks, but no thanks.
Look, I don't know anything, I'm a high school dropout who hasn't read all the tomes of theory, but I have a lot of lived experience, just hear me out:
China uses capital markets. But at any time, the state can seize and nationalize the assets of a corporation and tell the entire ownership and staff "thanks for your work, here's your severance, now go build something else." This is actually part of why the Westerners screech so loudly about the surveillance state and government overreach, because they're simping for actual capitalism, which has built a far-more-horrifying panopticon completely free of public control or oversight, renting it to Nazis just like IBM did last century.
Capital markets are just tools. They're extremely powerful feedback loops and should be used with care. It's "-ism" when you dogmatically use them for everything without regulation or any kind of discernment. For example, using capital markets for healthcare is like using a chainsaw to get a splinter out of your finger. But I'm not going to ban chainsaws just because some people decide to be chainsaw-ists. China uses all modern tools as appropriate for the job.
I reiterate my lack of education and clarify that I'm not trying to make the case that modern China exemplifies communism. But with my understanding of how they use capital markets, I would not call them capitalists.
So the fight, for you, was all about your own ego? About feeling good? Getting to make a change that helped you think your life was worth living? Fuck off. If you even feel like you have a choice to engage with this struggle or not, you're never going to be a part of it. "Buh buh the true left would be alpha and win every fight buh buh buh BUY MY BOOK." Might as well crawl into a grave right now! Why wait? You're not a relic, you're a lifelong cosplayer with no resolve or courage.
I think this is healthy. The left should start by ceasing to glamorize weakness. Let me give you a hint, that doesn’t work out well when you have to actually fight an enemy. Also, no movement can ever, ever afford to live in delusion and denial of reality. A good movement has to be a truth seeking movement. It has to update and adapt its empirical assumptions as the world changes. And it has to acknowledge fundamental truths, however inconvenient.
Most of this is unlikely to ever happen.
Is it unlikely to happen (according to you) because you're not involved right now in that process or because you were never involved?
Any genuine people's movement is built upon self-critique, and that was always the case.
No; I’m one guy, and have little power to make a difference one way or another. That said, I wish I had done more early on, if nothing else than at least to assuage the regret and guilt I feel now and not have to wonder if I was a coward.
I think it’s unlikely to happen because (1) it is painful to admit you are wrong and confront your friends, and humans rarely embrace pain willingly; (2) it hasn’t happened yet, even though there has been ample opportunity for it. I thought it would happen after Trump got elected the first time. We frittered away the time and power we had then.
Revolution comes from desperation. It is bound to happen spontaneusly and, in a way, unplanned. It fails unless there's already a well-known, decentralized, intellectual foundation above which to build the following system. All attempts at changing the status-quo are destined to be flickers while there's no clear common goal besides opposition. To act now is not to wait for everything to crumble and a so called "revolution" to happen, but to lay out the path for when it does.
I think your point about organizing around the idea of ensuring UBI as a solution for AI displacement is a good one. It’s a tangible goal. That’s what the left always lacked. It’s asking for too many things and lacks a cohesive message. I think organizing around UBI and Universal Healthcare is enough. Just two things.
Wrong emphasis: The Left hasn't failed the world, the Left has been succesfully bashed into pulp by a main stream media that has convinced its halfwitted audience that anything to the left of Genghis Khan is communism and hence shifted the Overton Window so far to the right that it destroys proper debate.
This was always the neoliberal plan and the Left were not prepared for it.