Getting Radical
I was browsing Twitter the other day when someone asked for interesting substacks. Culture Study (Anne Helen Petersen) was brought up and sounded interesting, so I checked it out. A recent post, From Burnout to Radicalization, was quite the intro.
The piece opens by reminding readers of the many published opinions (including one by the author) discussing the plight of parents — mothers in particular.
The main point of the piece is to highlight how radicalized many people have become since the beginning of the pandemic. It’s all over the political spectrum, but she points the main divide at collectivists vs individualists — radical rebuilding vs radical preservation. This got me wondering — How have I radicalized over the last 18 months? (If at all)
The truth is, I’m one of the lucky ones. I’m doing well enough that I haven’t had to radicalize. Things could keep going as-is and I’d be fine. I’d sure like to see some changes, but if no change happens, I won’t be hurt… At least yet. As she points out, people aren’t just burning out. The country itself is in danger of burning up. At best we get another civil rights movement of sorts, at worst a civil war. (Maybe worst case is a global war?) But we clearly need change.
My radical opinions actually haven’t changed. They’re opinions I’ve held for a while and now others appear to be catching up. Mainly those around child/elderly care and family support. “But lately rethinking if the nuclear family is even a viable social unit. Feels like we need more close people than that. Like dolphins, we may need pods.”
This quote in particular is something I’ve thought of a lot. I think the family unit is important, but I’ve thought many times in the last 5 years that we need a better family system. If it takes a village to raise a child then I’d like to know where my village is.
I’ve been a stay-at-home dad for the last 5 years, working mostly side hustles to bring in what extra income I could. On Wednesday my son starts full-time school for the first time. While I think the school system needs an overhaul (another “radical” opinion) I welcome the break. School, it appears, is going to be the village. It just took 5-1/2 years to get there.
Perhaps that is why its so understandable that parents are radicalizing. School has been the main child-support system for struggling parents, if nothing else serving as free daycare. The pandemic turned that support on its head.
The main difference I have is that I don’t track all of these problems to capitalism, as many collectivists do. Or, at least, I don’t see it as the great evil that some do. I take the belief that if we can blame capitalism for the ills of society, then we must also give it credit for the gains of society. And society (at least ours) has gained quite a bit over the last ~250 years. We seem to be backpedaing in recent years, but the path to progress has never been a straight shot upward.
Capitalism is just the economic base of our society. There is also a cultural component which I feel is more important. Our system evolved from a Monarchy/Feaudalism. It also evolved from a slave holding society. We’re also a very individualistic society. These things are still embedded in our culture.
We may not be a monarchy anymore, but we still have a very top-down view of authority. Benefits go to those at the top, first, while the bottom must wait for resources/change to trickle down. We may not have slavery, but in many ways Black people are still at the bottom of the racial hierarchy pyramid.
And that is where my radical economic belief lies. That the base should be given the most support. Our greatest investments should be into our weakest links, which includes those who, for one reason or another, are struggling to survive and thrive in our system.
That is where collectivists might say, “But… Capitalism is causing the hoarding of wealth and the means of production. The workers that make up the base are being held down. They don’t have access. Also white supremacy is at the core of the American experiment! If you care so much about the base how could you ever support American capitalism!”
For the record, it’s not that I support or don’t support capitalism. I live in the world we have, not the world I wish could be. And the world we have is one that I don’t personally think should be burned down. Most likely it is because of my current position in the system. But also because I believe that it isn’t just the economic system causing problems. I don’t care if it’s capitlism, socialism, communism, whatever.
Switching systems wont automatically make people believe in shifting resources to those at the bottom. That maybe the expectation of the socialist/communist model, but I’m not sure an economic system can completely retune a culture. I may be terribly naive, of course.
Another reason that I think it shouldn’t be burned down is because I believe reform is possible. But it does have to be radical reform. I’ll try to make my case by using two passages that left a mark when reading State and Revolution by Vladimir Lenin.
The first fact that has been established with complete exactness by the whole theory of evolution, by science as a whole… is that, historically, there must undoubtedly be a special stage or epoch of transition from capitalism to communism.
We are not Utpoians, we do not indulge in “dreams” of how best to do away immediately with all administration, with all subordination; these Anarchist dreams… serve but to put off the Socialist revolution until human nature is different. No, we want the Socialist revolution with human nature as it is now, with human nature that cannot do without subordination, control and “managers.”
I can agree with that first paragraph. As Lenin points out elswehere, fedualism led to capitalism and capitalism will lead to communism. This maybe true. I don’t know. I can buy the argument that capitalism will evolve into socialism, and then into communism. Or maybe it’ll evolve into something else.
What I can’t buy is the insistence that it happens before society is ready. If it is to really be an evolution, then it must be given time to evolve. We cannot jump through stages. Russia tried and that didn’t seem to go well. I suppose China is having a better go of it, but they are still very much in the dictatorship phase of the revolution, which calls into question when the dictatorship will ever end.
That’s another point of contention I have with Lenin. If the natural evolution of capitalism is to communism, then why do we need to force it with a dictatorship? I’ll admit, though, that my revolutionary reading list is pretty short. I’m sure there is much I can learn.
But that is a whole other subject. This writing is just to put my thoughts/opinions down with regard to the article linked above.
To sum up this up…
I’m for radical reform and evolution toward a society that values the base more than the top — that provides assistance and a “floor” to all citizens. Whether that is reformed capitalism or capitalism’s end and our evolution into socialism. (Or some other system.) I am not for burning it all down.
It’s not the revolutionary/radical answer. Perhaps because I’ve got a stable position in the system. A revolution would likely be a disaster for me. At the same time, I can empathize and understand why many may see revolution as the only way to transform society. I can understand why many would want that change today, rather than have to wait any longer.
We’ve been on this long and slow march of progress as a country since our founding. We started as a nation ruled by a very select few white property owning men. We’ve trasnformed into a society where even those descended from slaves can dream of power. But we’ve got a long way to go. We’re still in a period of wealth concentration, after all. Before long, we may reach a level of desperation that is impossible to turn back from.
I don’t have all the answers. Perhaps I’ll radicalize further in the coming years. Or maybe I’ll cool and cling harder to the system as-is. More likely I’ll be how I’ve always been — widely open to competing opinions which will keep me from becoming too extreme in any one direction.