why am i an annoying leftist?

I'm not proofreading this. Don't judge me.

I have the best and the worst job. My job right now is to read about social movements and to teach people about the agency they have in their lives. I read from the left. And everyday, despite warnings that when I 'grow up' and have a mortgage (which I do), my politics will somehow soften and I will become less rather than more radical. I've worked in non-profits, I've explored the community service sector, and my analysis only became more radical rather than less. The problems I was addressing - poverty, sexual assault, domestic violence, drug abuse, incarceration - are the logical and systematic outcomes of the inner workings of a social structure designed to marginalize the many at the expense of the few. I scarcely believe, as the logic of survival of the fittest suggests, that those at the top are somehow smarter, better, and more worthy. As I read and think about how popular leftist movements work and what they are fighting for, I become more and more convinced that the world as I see it is common sense; that is, until I read mainstream press or talk to people outside my little bubble of indignation and struggle.

In The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life, George Katsiaficas writes, "In short, the conditions of life are being destroyed at the same time as previously independent realms of everyday life are increasingly subsumed by the commodity form and criteria of profitability" (2006: 6). He argues that the rise of autonomous social movements in the 80s in Italy and Germany (he focuses mainly on Germany), was an important, yet under-recognized current of social movements that understood both the state and corporate form as colonizing forces that not only perpetuated all of the -isms that continue to separate and marginalize, but also that increasingly make the psychic and physical landscapes totalizing and seemingly inescapable. He goes on to say, "Privacy continues to be invaded, family life destroyed, job security made non-existent, environmental conditions degraded, water made unfit to drink, and the air made poisonous to our health" (6). These conditions seem inevitable and the solutions remain in the hands and subsumed by the logic of those who created the conditions in the first place. That is, 'the people' let keep reaffirming the hegemony of the powerful.

Sadly, the popular upsurges in the US - the upsurges I follow in the corporate media - are the Tea Party or its 'countermovement' to restore 'sanity.' Neither of these movements are particularly appealing to me (the former, obviously not, and the latter only strategically in this moment). I don't believe in the kind of sanity defined by existing conditions 'cause guess what - existing conditions are totally insane. I don't believe I'll ever see anything close to the kind of world I wish to inhabit. But I will not lay down and I will discuss my logic and I will be called crazy and as much as I feel alienated, I will have a sense of humor about how the world works and continue, like a sad clown, to fight. The contours and intensity of my 'fight' will vary. But fight I will because I think if I sat down with most people and spoke frankly about my beliefs - not my beliefs as issue-based (What should immigration policy look like? Who should have access to health care and how should it be organized?*) - but my pie in the sky beliefs about a totally unattainable world, I am sure, if we suspended our political rationality for just a second, people would say - "Of course, sure, but that's not possible." So what? I'm sure it's not. Just like it's never possible to do a lot of things that we continue to aim for - how to raise the perfect kid, how to have the perfect marriage, the perfect job, the most fully functional economy, a free market - blah blah blah. We aim for the impossible all the time and fail. But we do it.

This system only exists because we allow it to. We accept it and the majority of people, especially in rich western countries, do not try to create new structures based on new logics because they are 'impossible' - people are too selfish (yet we see selflessness all the time in a system that rewards selfishness), it's too hard, it's utopian, you're a 'socialist' (yet people complain about toll roads and the cost of private school). Another world possible - or as David Harvey said, it's coming whether we like it or not. I believe that it can look so so different and that 'different' is actually a sort of common sense that we've been told from the beginning is naive. FUCK that.

Rambly rambly rambly...

*These are all important questions but stay with me for a moment.