Theory and reality are different things, absolutely - politics is labor. Whether that’s used for good or evil is separate. Politics also =/= statism, and nothing will ever be neatly cut and dry in the real world to fully divorce ourselves from these quandaries.
Re: statism, that’s very fair, and it was what you said. I think I was partially responding to the “political elite” comment you were also responding to.
Totally agree, we can only speak certainties about real-world conditions, and the tendency toward abstraction and hypotheticals IMO is sort of a negative tendency in many ways.
I keep writing more, but I don’t wanna get way in the weeds. Def appreciate the thoughtful response
Why not? Politics happens either way. There are going to be people who are more influential than others. name any famous anarchist, my favorite was Malatesta, and they were 100% absolutely engaged in political work.
Is it just that political work is okay until after the workers seize the means? IMO denying the necessity of political work as a means of suppressing the possibility of political domination of a minority, which is a real concern, drifts into authoritarianism almost instantly. Its just denying reality. Denying that political work is work is a political opinion. Enforcing it would be political work!
This is not a gotcha question, genuinely want to hear your opinion. I don’t think pointing out a contradiction is, on its own, a total invalidation of any given viewpoint. Contradictions are everywhere, people are contradictory.
Yeah, and I def relate to the person I respond to. I fully accept the necessity of political engagement, and volunteer time and money and energy toward that goal. That being said, I’m someone very concerned with truth and criticism, whereas there are others who are very concerned with politics. And in my experience, people who are very talented, committed and active politically are prone to always wanna come down on this or that side of an issue, or have a very clearly developed line even when maybe the conditions for having a hard and fast line are not all the way developed.
Meanwhile, a lot of people just aren’t really experienced with that kind of engagement. It’s very frustrating, and perhaps counter productive, to collapse every issue and practical activity into politics. Like actually, not everything is politics. Every movement has a political character, and denying that is a political stance! But culture isn’t politics. Culture is political, it has a political character, but it isn’t in and of itself politics. Just like politics has a cultural character but is distinct. I like the Marxist framing of economic base and superstructure; so that politics, law, and culture, and all associated institutions, are superstructure – closely related and categorically similar but still distinct. While the motivations behind those things have a basis in economics, or maybe to simplify even further, the real human need and creation/social distribution of resources – which is the economic base.
In many cases I wish for more cultural engagement than political engagement. And peoples experience with politics, and how easily and thoroughly it becomes corrupted, is a real objective obstacle to mass political engagement. So while I am active in and very proud of the political gains the left has made in recent years, the absence of a real leftist culture, or counter hegemony, is a red flag for our movements. And I think I would prefer to have many spaces for people to engage with politics indirectly, than to just insist that people engage with politics directly. There’s wrong headedness in believing that all politics is inherently a path to corruption and centralization of power. But its perhaps just as wrong to insist that the only path to engagement with left mass politics is through direct political engagement.
As someone whose talents lie more in pedagogy and art and culture than politics, I think I am less effective than I could be if there was more to our movements than just winning people to this or that political line through campaigns and clear victories of legal/organizational legitimacy.
Honest question: is political work a valid form of labor?
Theory and reality are different things, absolutely - politics is labor. Whether that’s used for good or evil is separate. Politics also =/= statism, and nothing will ever be neatly cut and dry in the real world to fully divorce ourselves from these quandaries.
Re: statism, that’s very fair, and it was what you said. I think I was partially responding to the “political elite” comment you were also responding to.
Totally agree, we can only speak certainties about real-world conditions, and the tendency toward abstraction and hypotheticals IMO is sort of a negative tendency in many ways.
I keep writing more, but I don’t wanna get way in the weeds. Def appreciate the thoughtful response
Honest personal opinion: Absolutely not.
Why not? Politics happens either way. There are going to be people who are more influential than others. name any famous anarchist, my favorite was Malatesta, and they were 100% absolutely engaged in political work.
Is it just that political work is okay until after the workers seize the means? IMO denying the necessity of political work as a means of suppressing the possibility of political domination of a minority, which is a real concern, drifts into authoritarianism almost instantly. Its just denying reality. Denying that political work is work is a political opinion. Enforcing it would be political work!
This is not a gotcha question, genuinely want to hear your opinion. I don’t think pointing out a contradiction is, on its own, a total invalidation of any given viewpoint. Contradictions are everywhere, people are contradictory.
Also that’s not my downvote, I don’t do that shi
“banning” politics is a wild concept anyways, because as we bang on about everything is politics.
Yeah, and I def relate to the person I respond to. I fully accept the necessity of political engagement, and volunteer time and money and energy toward that goal. That being said, I’m someone very concerned with truth and criticism, whereas there are others who are very concerned with politics. And in my experience, people who are very talented, committed and active politically are prone to always wanna come down on this or that side of an issue, or have a very clearly developed line even when maybe the conditions for having a hard and fast line are not all the way developed.
Meanwhile, a lot of people just aren’t really experienced with that kind of engagement. It’s very frustrating, and perhaps counter productive, to collapse every issue and practical activity into politics. Like actually, not everything is politics. Every movement has a political character, and denying that is a political stance! But culture isn’t politics. Culture is political, it has a political character, but it isn’t in and of itself politics. Just like politics has a cultural character but is distinct. I like the Marxist framing of economic base and superstructure; so that politics, law, and culture, and all associated institutions, are superstructure – closely related and categorically similar but still distinct. While the motivations behind those things have a basis in economics, or maybe to simplify even further, the real human need and creation/social distribution of resources – which is the economic base.
In many cases I wish for more cultural engagement than political engagement. And peoples experience with politics, and how easily and thoroughly it becomes corrupted, is a real objective obstacle to mass political engagement. So while I am active in and very proud of the political gains the left has made in recent years, the absence of a real leftist culture, or counter hegemony, is a red flag for our movements. And I think I would prefer to have many spaces for people to engage with politics indirectly, than to just insist that people engage with politics directly. There’s wrong headedness in believing that all politics is inherently a path to corruption and centralization of power. But its perhaps just as wrong to insist that the only path to engagement with left mass politics is through direct political engagement.
As someone whose talents lie more in pedagogy and art and culture than politics, I think I am less effective than I could be if there was more to our movements than just winning people to this or that political line through campaigns and clear victories of legal/organizational legitimacy.