‘There remains an immense suspicion of political pessimism. Salvage has always stressed that our pessimism, born of analysis, is not at all coterminous with surrender – the opposite – and that it yearns to be wrong. At this moment, this fist in the face, any response other than a pessimistic sense of the growing gulf…
Category: the Left
Cliston Brown: “Dear Democrats: Nobody Cares About Your Feelings”
“Conservatives are much more clear-eyed—and that’s why they win so often. And here’s another, closely-related lesson Democrats would do well to learn: nobody cares about your feelings. You can march, yell, and sign petitions all you want, but your voice won’t be heard until you figure out where the correct pressure points are located. Conservatives…
Micah White: “Without a path from protest to power, the Women’s March will end up like Occupy.”
“Social activists have succumbed to one of the most enduring myths of contemporary American protest. It’s time to consider what happens the day after. The question every protester should ask: what will happen after the march? … Without a clear path from march to power, the protest is destined to be an ineffective feelgood spectacle…
Gary Younge: “How Barack Obama paved the way for Donald Trump”
Making Trump’s victory possible: ‘As Obama passes the keys and the codes to Donald Trump at the end of this week, so many liberals mourn the passing of what has been, remain in a state of disbelief for what has happened, and express deep anxiety about what is to come. It is a steep cliff…
Rebecca Solnit: “We could’ve avoided President Donald Trump. Now, we must learn the lessons.”
‘There were many turns not taken, countless alternative routes that would have spared us this outcome. Instead, we kept going, corruption, infighting and sheer obliviousness stopping us from changing course.’ ‘This year, you’d be forgiven for thinking “left” was short for “left behind”’. ‘Millions were asleep at the wheel; the shock has jolted us awake.…
Toni Negri interview: “Communism as a Continuing Constituent Process”
‘The problem is understanding which behaviors, levels of organization, and capacities of expression the new proletariat has. Because, when we say “there is no solution except revolution,” we say something that is at this point banal. The problem is not knowing if it is necessary, but rather knowing how it is necessary and how it…
Frances Fox Piven: “Throw Sand in the Gears of Everything”
“What makes movements a force—when they are a force—is the deployment of a distinctive power that arises from the ability of angry and indignant people to at times defy the rules that usually ensure their cooperation and quiescence. Movements can mobilize people to refuse, to disobey, in effect to strike. In other words, people in…
Andreas Karitzis: “Radical left strategies in the era of the collapse of ‘Actually Existing Liberalism'”
“A few decades after the fall of ‘actually existing socialism’, we are experiencing the fall of ‘actually existing liberalism’, so to speak. How should the left approach this historical moment?” “A lot of people nowadays move towards new ways of doing things; they build new kinds of institutions and form hybrid types of organizing and…
“Is There Any Hope for France’s Left?”
“As the far-right surges, the contradictions on the left may prove to be irreconcilable” (New Republic, December 23, 2016).
Kevin Anderson: “Deep Contradictions Facing the Global Movement for Human Emancipation”
“We live in a time marked by the revolutionary upsurge that began in the Arab world in 2011, followed swiftly by Madison, Madrid, Occupy Wall Street, and then a bit later, by Gezi Park in Turkey, the defense of Kobane, Black Lives Matter, and the Sanders and Corbyn phenomena. During this whole period, tiny Greece…