On refusing to participate in a world that permits the sickest shit...

...or creating a world that does not.

Karim recently wrote an essay that struck a chord, and reminded me of a lesson I wished I had learned back when 9/11 first woke me up to global politics. Back then, or soon thereafter, I could pat myself on the back for having un-suckered myself out of several political beliefs into which I had previously been suckered. Among them, that U.S. liberalism and conservatism represented the left and right ends of the ideological spectrum, as did the Democratic and Republican Parties; that the U.S. government’s primary foreign policy goal was to spread democracy and protect human rights throughout the world; and so on. I was proud that I beat the odds: Mark Twain pointed out that it is easier to sucker someone than to convince them that they have been suckered,* and yet, I managed to recognize I had been suckered, and emerge un-suckered.

Or so I thought. But there was one belief that remained, one that continued to sucker me. It was well hidden, seeming less an identifiable belief than a background condition, a piece of unexamined common sense or tacit knowledge that did not require elaboration, it was so obviously true. But, borrowing from Schopenhauer, if it were not already the commonest of assumptions, it would be the most improbable of conclusions.

Even naming it is difficult. I lean toward “liberalism”, but that word has countless meanings (I just used a different one in the first paragraph), and “individualism” seems fitting but not encompassing. It is the sense that the locus of political action is in oneself; that political problems are caused by wrong acts, or a lack of the right acts, being committed by oneself or others (usually others); and that the solution to political evils is speaking truth to power, and revealing the truth (since sunshine is the best disinfectant). This presupposes a healthy public sphere or marketplace of ideas, where good ideas will always drive out bad, and bad ideas – leading to evil acts – can only thrive where the sunlight of better ideas does not reach. Hence the correct political action is for each individual to be a moral exemplar: not consuming products from morally tainted companies or countries, not working for morally tainted companies, countries, or organizations, and in terms of positive action, engaging in the correct speech acts: educating others on which companies/countries/organizations are morally wrong, and protesting in public, speaking truth to power. The required change happens when a critical mass of individuals has been educated, lends their voices to the just cause, and forces power to concede to their righteous demands.

Karim captured the practical logic of this belief perfectly:

If we had lived in Germany in 1938, we would have hidden someone in the attic. If we had lived in Mississippi in 1955, we would have marched. If we had lived in Rwanda in 1994, we would have — what? Spoken up? Done something?

That is, we like to believe that atrocities of the past were enabled by morally corrupt or spineless individuals, and that if we (each individual one of us) had been there, our moral rectitude would have prevented them. Surely, if every individual in Germany in 1938 had hidden a Jewish, Roma, communist, homosexual, or other targeted person in their attics, the death camps would have had far fewer victims. And if every person living in Mississippi in the 1950s had marched for civil rights, that doubtless would have put sufficient pressure on the state government to enforce universal civil rights. (But such counterfactuals erode their own premises: if every individual German or Mississippian person had been of such a mind as to hide targeted minorities or march for civil rights, the evil necessitating such action could hardly have existed in the first place.) The Rwandan example starts to reveal the problem: what would a right-minded individual have done? They could have hidden a few Tutsi people in their homes, and spoken out among their peers against the demonization of the Tutsi minority; but unless a critical mass of individuals did so, the genocide would have happened regardless, only with slightly fewer victims.

In a sense, these atrocities were caused by “a few dozen men in offices”. At the top of the German, Mississippian, and Rwandan governments were indeed a few dozen men in offices – who commanded hundreds of thousands of other men and women. These were not mere aggregations of hundreds of thousands of individuals (of weak moral conscience); these were organizations. They comprised hundreds of thousands of individuals, but the whole was far more than the sum of its parts. The Nazi Party in Germany, the ol’ boys club that ran the Mississippi state government, and the National Revolutionary Movement for Development in Rwanda were these organizations, and could exert such power because their members acted as one, following orders to exert an impact far greater than what their individual members acting independently could possibly do.

A mass of individuals is just a sack of potatoes: capable of providing sustenance or serving as a doorstop, but not much else. Better yet, a mass of individuals is like a bucket full of uncoordinated human cells in one big, undifferentiated soup – an organization, on the other hand, is composed of the same human cells in that imaginary bucket, but coordinated, creating a human being with all of its capacities. Look at one individual bone or muscle cell in either the bucket or the functioning human body, and there is not much difference; but look at all of the bone cells in the bucket versus in the body, and an enormous difference emerges. The cell in the bucket is far freer, having to serve no greater purpose imposed from above; but the cell in the body sacrifices that freedom to be part of a far greater whole.

The Nazi empire, segregation in the U.S., and the Rwandan genocide were evils that were not stopped by masses of individuals. They were stopped by organizations. The Nazis were stopped largely by the Soviet Union, with help from partisan organizations and the other countries comprising the Allies. That is, they were stopped by hundreds of millions of people following orders: to run out of a foxhole under enemy fire and capture a pillbox, or to wake up early and start work every day at the munitions factory, along with countless other orders required for the organization to function and accomplish its objectives. The good ‘ol boys club in Mississippi was also stopped by the Soviet Union, through structural pressure, but more immediately by smaller organizations making up the U.S. civil rights movement. And the Rwandan genocide was ended by another army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front: again, not a mass of right-thinking and -acting individuals, but an organization of disciplined individuals following orders.

And so it remains today. The liberal individualist response – which was inculcated into me since childhood – can only wish that a mass of uncoordinated, free individuals would choose to withdraw from the organizations they comprise, and force the machine that is the global political-economic system to a halt. A general strike, without an organized union to negotiate demands or keep its members housed and fed. Only this can be readily imagined as the solution to the genocide in Gaza, the omnicide of Earth we call the ecological crisis, and everything in between.

And that is because the illiberal, collectivist alternative seems so distant to those of us in the Anglosphere, communicating in English about politics in the West/North. Our older generations, which should serve as a source of wisdom for younger generations, were largely convinced by a group of intellectuals who made them fear power (“it corrupts, don’t you know!”), abjure revolutions (“revolutions can be violent, and oftentimes result in bad things happening!”), and restrict themselves to “speaking truth to power” while penned in a “free speech zone”. The problem is, they are right – power does tend to corrupt, and bad things often do happen in revolutions – but their conclusions are all wrong. Despite these being truths, we still must seek to capture state power, in the way state power has almost always been captured: via revolution, preferably bloodless, carried out by organizations.

Because if we do not create our own disciplined organizations, we are a mere gaggle of impotent individuals facing the disciplined organizations they have created. The IDF murdering journalists; the USAF massacring schoolchildren; the Israeli, U.S., and European governments committing genocide; and the countless corporations – yet more disciplined organizations – working hard on committing omnicide.

From my perch as an ex-sucker for liberal individualism, it is a discomfiting idea that the only way to make political progress is by joining, influencing, and perhaps even leading an organization. It clashes with the protagonist syndrome we have been raised with, that we ourselves can play the pivotal role – and another symptom of Hollywood movies – that our pivotal role will allow good to triumph over evil, as it always does, regardless of the odds.

But there is no alternative. Individuals can perform individual acts of valor, or foolishness; self-immolation is one extreme, but that has not stopped a single war. Individual acts of violence hardly have a better track record. Assassinations can have an impact, but even when they seem to have the desired one (e.g., Lincoln), like a human resources department acting in reverse, it is only because there was an organization in place (the remaining ruling class of the Confederacy) to secure the desired goal. Small organizations sacrificing mass for ideological purity, like the Japanese Red Army, fare little better. Their voluntaristic attempt to secure justice for Palestine ended with two of their members and a couple dozen civilians dead, most of them pilgrims from Puerto Rico. The best that could be said of the results they achieved was that Israeli security officials were forced to disabuse themselves of some East Asian stereotypes. Any real, lasting, and significant change can only be effected by disciplined, mass organizations.

Hence whatever you do, do not let yourself be paralyzed. Whether paralysis is caused by shock at the state of the world, or one’s own conscience beating oneself up for the state of the world and not having transformed oneself into a superman to fix it, paralysis only makes things worse. The evils that might otherwise paralyze you are caused by organizations; only organizations can end them. So join and/or create them.

I really only know the U.S., so for those reading from there, join the only kind of political organization available to join: imperfect at best, woefully deficient at worst. Activist organizations like Code Pink, yes, but also activist-organizations-cum-political-parties like Socialist Alternative and DSA, CPUSA and ACP. (Hell, join the Democratic and Republican Parties too, with the aim of taking them over.)

“But Peter,” yes, I know, each of these organizations is horrendously flawed, with a mistaken ideology and plenty of spies and agents provocateur working for the government. It could hardly be otherwise in a country lacking freedom of speech and association, like the U.S. since at least the Red Scare. Join them anyway. And work toward shaping them into the organizations they should be, even as their FBI-agent members work against you.

Or, if you have command of massive resources, start your own organization, and recruit by using the modern means of mass communication to spread your message to hundreds of millions of people, convincing them to join.

That is it. As unsatisfying as it is, there is no other way that serious political change has been effected, other than through the hard work of disciplined, mass organizations. The liberal individualist dream, that acts of speech would suffice, could be a reality – but that would require a functioning public sphere, that is, a democracy-appropriate media system, which does not yet exist.

So buck up, and donate your labor and/or money within an organization. It may be too late to stop the genocide in Gaza or the war on Iran; it is probably too late to avoid mass suffering and death from the looming ecological catastrophe. But this is not because building mass, disciplined organizations is a failed strategy; it is because this strategy was not implemented in time.

Better late than never. Gaza’s was not the first genocide, and it likely will not be the last. The organizations perpetrating it will continue on with the same goals and the same crackpot, supremacist ideology; we need our own organizations to counteract them. We will not escape the ecological crisis unscathed, too much damage is already baked into the cake; but we can mitigate its impact, and lessen the suffering and death it causes.

All of that being said, it is entirely understandable why so many feel paralyzed, numbed by atrocity after atrocity. We can choose to embrace that paralysis and do nothing; that is entirely rational, as there is little any individual can do. Or we can choose to act as if victory were assured, joining and contributing to an organization, regardless of how we rationally assess the odds of victory. If Gramsci could write this in a fascist prison, those of us in the Anglosphere can certainly afford “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.”

- Peter

*This is actually a superior mutation of the original: "How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!"