What to do now
A step-by-step guide for the victory of humanity over doom
As I argued before the election, Trump’s victory creates favorable organizing conditions for the left. Trump's first term created a sense of crisis among people who oppose fascism, and that compelled them to take action, primarily through street protests, electoral politics, and a "cultural turn." But those tactics were not especially effective: indeed, we are now right back where we started.
The Democratic Party absorbed a great deal of energy and money and promptly wasted it, in their usual fashion. Various groups on the left also absorbed energy and new members, with some effect, but they generally have not shown the ability to make their internal or external gains far-reaching or durable.
For liberals, the Biden presidency saw a retreat from organizing and a return to brunch, as it were. Life within the imperial core puttered along, even accounting for the minor disruptions created by those opposing a horrific genocide, which the ruling class has been able to prosecute without much difficulty. The increasingly alarming impacts of ecocide have done nothing to dampen the endless enthusiasm for cancerous economic growth. COVID emergency welfare measures, which had a meaningful impact on inequality, were tossed in the trash heap with bipartisan support.
It's been a remarkably dispiriting time. However, in this new moment of dreadful crisis, the conditions for radical change have improved. In crisis, there is opportunity—something capitalists know well—but we can't take advantage of it by repeating the mistakes of the past.
If we are to avoid a fascist consolidation of power or an endless yo-yo between increasingly authoritarian neoliberal regimes and increasingly dystopian fascist regimes, we will need to change strategy. Relying on external crises to drum up support for the left is a dangerous game, and it only does half the job anyway. Trump's nightmarish clown show will motivate plenty of people to take action, but channelling their energy effectively and retaining them is the real challenge.
The way to solve that riddle is this: participation in left organizing must improve the quality of life for participants. If being a part of the left is just a draining homework assignment done out of moral or political obligation, then people will burn-out or leave when the crisis subsides. There must be real material benefits to participation.
We cannot rely on ideological commitments to fuel the left's victory: we are a small minority without the resources to persuade the masses through propaganda alone. More podcasts will not get the job done. And persuasion does not do the work of making change. It does the work of recruiting for movements and softening resistance, but change is only made by raising the cost of the status quo.
Our goal, then, must be to build a left that can endure and grow and ultimately end our collective march towards social, political, and ecological doom. So how do we combine a world-changing agenda with an organizing process that materially improves the lives of participants?
By combining library socialism with internal mutual aid and dual power, governed by the ideology of degrowth eco-socialism. If you think you already know what these words mean, please read on.
What is library socialism? It is an agenda for expanding public goods via the library model: the collective democratic ownership, distribution, and governance of wealth. How should we do that?
"First, by assessing which human needs are most impacted by capitalism's failures. The impact of inflation on food prices is a perfect point of entry. It has the practical and psychological effect of making alternatives more feasible and appealing. The economic and psychological terrain has become fertile for the seeding of counter-hegemonic institutions and ideas, such as municipal food forests. Such a "food library" has the immediately intuitive advantage of being immune to inflation: anyone can see that the price of apples from the community trees will not go up or down at the whim of the market. Those apples will always be there for us, no matter what is happening to the price of oil.”
What is internal mutual aid?
"[When] people within organizations help each other to meet their basic needs. This is most efficacious when it is formalized within the organizational structure, via hardship funds, volunteer assignments, and direct benefits. It is worth noting that many churches do this, and it is a significant part of why they earn enduring loyalty even from those who aren't deeply religious. If an organization can help provide its members with food, transportation, health care, housing, etc, then it both improves their quality of life and reduces their need to do waged work outside of their volunteer activities."
What is dual power?
"The term originated with Lenin, who used it to describe the tension between the Soviets ('workers' councils') and the weak Russian Provisional Government following the February Revolution. Lenin argued that dual power would allow for the overthrow of the Provisional Government and its replacement with a union of Soviets. This entailed the expansion and defense of alternative and counter institutions that would undermine and replace the governing capacity of the officially recognized state, eventually leading to its full replacement with the insurgent power. He believed this was possible due to the Provisional Government's lack of popular legitimacy and the rising credibility of the Soviets."
What is degrowth eco-socialism?
"Degrowth eco-socialism means an abundance of life's best features: public goods, healthy environments, free time, good food, relationships, meaningful work, education, artistic expression, medicine, recreation. In short, it is for the efficient production of joy, not GDP. It is a political economy that serves us and our ecosystem, not the other way around."
As noted above, these approaches must be practiced with the goal of seizing state power and revolutionizing it. We can neither afford to ignore the state nor wield it unchanged. We must take it and transform it in the image of the movement described above. Only then will we have created a new hegemony capable of replacing capitalism, ending imperialism, and building a new egalitarian and ecological society.
There is a powerful and successful group currently practicing a very similar approach: the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST), who just won 133 elections after running their own candidates for the first time. Do yourself a favor and read all about them.
While we cannot mimic all of their tactics—local conditions must always dictate how we deploy any strategy—they nonetheless provide an excellent model. Now is the time to start thinking and talking about what that looks like where you live.
Then, you must act.
This is so fucking where my mind is at right now. Thanks for putting the words out there
Yes. Underneath all the faces of crisis is the simple question of happiness. Properly happy people don’t need to consume excessively to feed hungry ghosts, they don’t need to project their insecurities as far away as possible, or give away their power to take care of themselves to the unscrupulous few willing to take it from them.
What makes a human happy, in a long term sustainable sense? Basic needs being met is certainly a prerequisite – but one can be in prison and have most of that provided. And most people, most of the time, aren’t motivated (and aren’t voting or otherwise politically engaged) purely because of hunger, shelter warmth, etc, but by a much more complex mixture of drives. The deepest natures of which – emotional, psychological, spiritual, ecological – are kept invisible, so most people don’t even know they have them, so they are kept confused, and feeling deeply lacking somewhere in the soul, and not able to see the conceptual magic that hides even the possibility of this. A sense of self that has been cultivated to assume a certain powerlessness and vulnerability. All intermingled with the more concrete and measurable lacks and needs.
Meaning and belonging and self-determination are all closely related. The positive feedback loop of putting physical bodily effort directly into producing one’s own food, and taking care of one’s own environment, with others, and the feelings that helps create of interdependence across personal, generational, and species boundaries, of no longer feeling vulnerable to or dependent for one’s survival upon the vagaries of vastly complex systems of economics or even just food production that are sensitive to the whims of psychopaths, and that one knows harm ones own environment... these are prerequisites for happiness!
We know how much nature helps. We know how much healthy community interaction and healthy culture help. We know how to build these things – deep in our bones, for they are parts of being human we carried through all the billions of years of becoming us and have only started to forget pretty recently.
So let’s remember to focus on the here and now and cultivate radical happiness. Through each person’s own happiness, we offer those we meet the knowledge that it is available to them too. Hey, maybe we even have just a little capacity to welcome others on board. Word of mouth is always the most effective marketing.
I’m also not sure the message of happiness needs or can even that effectively be delivered by mass media, or memes, or any of that technology, because that all is at root such a large part of the system delivering fear and scarcity into our imaginations and bodies, used to influence and control, through addiction to drama. They come from and grew out of capitalism – like so much of the world’s culture that we have to be brave enough to prepare to let go of. Those channels are specifically designed to soften us into the weak consumers who prop up the capitalist pyramid. Perhaps those channels can help spread the message – but my feeling is that inasmuch as they are designed to steal our attention (perhaps our greatest gift), it’s best to return as much of our focus as possible to our physical here and now, and let the digital take care of itself somewhat. Or at least use those channels to keep reminding people to get off them.
It is radical to say no to that manufactured addiction to drama. It is radical to be patient and trust, to return to cycles of growth that are rooted in the embodied present, yet extend and intertwine in every direction – as Tyson Yunkaporta said, the seeds we plant now won’t be old-growth forests for 1000 years.
Cultivate patience, and peace, and understand that so much of the conditioning that has been put into our bodies is to rush, to react, to run away from fear, to steal from tomorrow. I’m not saying do nothing or don’t move fast to do what’s necessary right now – just that to master one’s own adrenal response, and the cycles of panic and anger and burn-out, is really vital. (Part of that peace might be to know that you are able to defend yourself, your people, your space physically – know that you are safe and that you can overcome challenges. Learn martial arts. Walk with your head high).
Yes, do everything needed to organise practically, at all levels of the political spectrum (at least where it feels efficacious or necessary). And at the same time make sure there is a strong focus on happiness at the heart of everything – and not just one’s own happiness, but that of one’s neighbours, and children, and children’s children, unto many generations
To be real, to look this reality in the face, and yet to be happy, is not only possible, but perhaps a duty. This is not an easy path. But it allows the imagination to be free, and gosh, with more humans with free imaginations around, well, anything’s possible...
❤️