I've been listening to Confronting Capitalism with Vivek Chibber, and pondering how to re-enter the workforce in some capacity, or really just re-enter a life of doing something other than just caring for my own health. Which I suppose might be a little premature since I'm still in the early cycles of a nine week chemotherapy treatment, but oh well, here we are.
Policy capture and moral panic
One of the points that's constantly being hammered home in the Confronting Capitalism podcast is the importance of organizing around the working class. This is presented in contrast to how supposedly progressive parties, like the Democrats in the US, have approached their platforms and constituencies.
My understanding of the central thesis is that in the last few decades, the dismantling of economic regulation and related legal changes have exposed both the Democratic and Republican parties to outsized influence from donor and business classes. This financial influence has led to the abandonment of genuinely progressive economic policies and protection of the working class. Instead, both parties have caved to monopolizing, extractive lobbying by business interests, largely in order to secure the funding they think they need to remain competitive in elections.
This has created a vicious cycle where the policy-making power of political parties has been reduced or corrupted, and they're funded based on their ability to win elections and represent their business interests, and so their focus has shifted almost exclusively to winning elections.
The situation here in Canada isn't all that much better. We've inherited a lot of the weak antitrust practices and the DMCA, and this has yielded some really shitty monopolies, from our grocery stores to our communications companies. It seems really likely if not certain that corporations have a lot more influence over our politics than individuals. But we at least have the NDP and the Greens to keep us a little further from a completely broken two-party system.
In any case, what's interesting and also discussed at length is that a side-effect of the capture and dismantling of economically progressive policy is the increased need for the parties to differentiate on social issues. Starting from a well-intentioned focus on reducing systemic injustice, the Democratic party has leaned hard into issues centred around morality and identity. At best, this focus can drive great social policies and even provide a moral justification to try to revisit genuinely progressive economic policy. But at worst, the focus on the systemic dimension gets lost, and the (justified) moral outrage gets directed into analysis and judgment on the moral failing of individuals. Looking at the US from the outside, at times it feels like the bubbling sentiment in some progressive circles is that if all the backwards-minded racists and bigots want to vote for the bad party instead of the good party, then they're morally unworthy of progressive politics anyways, and they're getting what they deserve.
In other words, taking the partisan parts of it out, your favourite party's ability to address the material conditions of the working class has been kneecapped by business interests. All they're left with is the hope of rallying their constituency on moral and identity issues. Your least favourite party is in a very similar situation, having also been captured by business interests. As a result, both parties have a strong need to appear different from each other in order to remain competitive in electoral politics, and if they want to keep their donor class, the only dimension they have to express this difference is morality and identity. Your favourite party leans hard into convincing you their leader is a different kind of person, who's really looking out for your interests and the interests of working people, and that the other party's leader, not to mention anyone who might vote for them, has been corrupted by some combination of morality-reducing propaganda, brainwashing, and big money.
It turns out this isn't a great recipe for progress of any kind. Organizing around moral issues is complicated. Practically by definition in Western contexts, morality is wrapped up in individual identity, and it's hard for many of us to approach moral issues without worrying about our own egos. And more importantly, it seems like the biggest reason that this all falls apart completely is that moral interest and material interest are intimately related. If neither party has the power to address the genuine material interests of their constituencies, material conditions for the working class will continue to decline, and as material conditions decline, people will become more desperate and, in the absence of any alternative, more receptive to extreme moral and political positions and more angry at whoever they perceive to be their enemy.
Material decline and extremism
This theme of material decline leading to political extremism is explored in detail in Andre Callaghan's documentary Dear Kelly. A man named Kelly loses his law practice and his home due to a variety of factors, at least some of which are beyond his control and tied into the financial crisis of 2008, and he becomes completely disconnected from his family and descends into a rabbit hole of far-right politics. The film follows an attempt to bring the family back together, and it seems to be going well, but it becomes clear that the forces that keep Kelly from returning to a relatively normal life aren't going to resolve overnight.
It seems like Kelly has had such a difficult time with the change in his material conditions that he's become hyper-focused on worrying about the material conditions of the country as a whole. Setting aside whether anything he believes or participates in will actually help the country to a better place, his hyper-focus prevents him from dedicating time and attention not just to his family, but to basic shit like his living situation.
It's clear to his family that trying to organize around his moral interests will go nowhere. The prospect of trying to direct Kelly to detach from the cult-like political organizations he's engaging with ignores the root problem, which is that Kelly feels he has lost his family, his life, and in large part his sense of self and his sense of pride. He sees his political engagement as a path back to some sense of stable identity and useful role in society, and it undeniably provides him some sense of community. The conversation the family sets up in collaboration with Andrew and Kelly shows signs of promise and success, precisely because they try to focus on offering Kelly a clear, judgement-free path back to regaining what he's lost, rather than trying to take away the weird thing he's slotted into that missing space in his life.
Organize around material conditions
All this leads me to a conclusion that probably seems obvious, which is that when it comes to questions about how to organize ourselves and collaborate with each other, it's really important to apply our moral and material concerns in specific ways. So here's a little note to myself.
To the extent that I'm able to do so, letting my own moral interests define the area of work I engage in seems wise. If I have on the one hand an opportunity in an area I find morally despicable, and on the other hand an opportunity in an area I think will do good, I should choose the latter. Of course, it's rarely this simple or clear cut... but sometimes it is. If I love libraries, I should consider working at a library. If I hate big businesses and I want to be a barista, I should try to find a job at a local coffee shop rather than a Starbucks. If I love open-source software, I should try to find a way to write open-source software and also pay my rent.
Very quickly though, the question of what area to work in will turn into the question of what work to do specifically, and for who, and how to organize with the people around you. When it comes to organizing with others, and building something together with other people, it seems like focusing on the material interests of the people you're trying to serve is key. It's tempting to get into questions of morality - should you really care about someone's material interests if you disagree with their morality? I think there's a relatively simple resolution, which is that the path to moral alignment is paved by the collective meeting of our material needs through mutual aid. Which is to say, I shouldn't take actions that directly compromise my morals in ways I find unacceptable, but also, I shouldn't expect people in materially precarious situations to share my moral convictions. The path to further the moral causes I care about is likely to involve helping people meet their material needs regardless of what their current moral convictions entail.
Cycling infrastructure as a concrete example
To get a bit more concrete, I love bikes. I have a strong moral conviction that cycling is better than driving. I want to live in a city where I can bike around, so I want to organize with other people to make the city I live in friendlier to cyclists. How can I convince people to join this effort? And how can we organize around our goals?
One way would be lead with morality. If I can convince people to share the moral standpoint I have on cycling, they'll feel better about riding a bike. I could raise awareness about the climate crisis, which will make people feel a little more guilty about driving, and a little more motivated to get on a bike. I could raise awareness about traffic fatalities, and every time they get on a bike they'll feel a small sense of relief and peace knowing they're doing the right thing.
This approach has a huge flaw that should be obvious by now. This approach is completely unconvincing if not actively hostile in a moral and identity sense towards the very group of people I'd be happiest to see change their minds - people who hate non-recreational cycling for whatever reason, and drive their cars everywhere. The last thing they want to hear is that, by the way, I think you're a bad person for all those actions you're taking, and you'd be a better person if you rode a bike instead of driving.
The moral approach completely ignores the current material conditions, which is that the cycling infrastructure kind of sucks in the vast majority of the city right now, so it's actually a huge compromise to start cycling. It feels unsafe, it takes forever to get anywhere because everything is so spread out, and it's unclear what material benefit it would have, if any.
And frankly, if I'm honest with myself, I'm not really that excited about riding a bike in a cycling-friendly city on the basis of morality. I'm excited about riding a bike in a cycling-friendly city because, having lived in cycling-friendly areas, I have a very clear picture of how my life could be materially better. A big part of my moral conviction around the value of bike-friendly cities is that it has the potential to improve a ton of small details in the day-to-day lives of every single resident.
So, to organize people around building a cycling-friendly city, I can instead lead with the material conditions we'll get to experience as cyclists in a cycling-friendly city. If you live in a really cycling-friendly city, you'll rarely need to drive, so you can use a car-share instead of owning a car. You only need a few bucks a year to maintain a bicycle. This will save you hundreds of dollars a month in insurance and vehicle expenses. With some dedicated cycling infrastructure, you'll feel much safer and more calm as you cycle around the city. You'll feel healthier thanks to the little bits of extra physical activity.
And gradually the city will change its shape, it might take ten years or so, but eventually you'll be able to make short bike rides to the grocery store instead of having to drive 30 minutes to a giant box in the suburbs. The roads will be quieter - have you noticed how fucking noisy roads are? Quieter cities are more materially enjoyable in some many ways, from calmer parks to safer intersections and so on and so on. I can paint visions of the concrete material conditions that make cycling-friendly cities appealing. And I can try to do this both for the immediate short-term, which will probably feel much less ambitious but at least attainable, and the longer term, which will probably feel pseudo-utopian but much farther out of reach.
Yet another line of thinking is to go even further to meet people where they are. I can lead with the improved material conditions that drivers will get to experience in a cycling-friendly city. If you live in a cycling-friendly city, you'll have better infrastructure to keep cars and bikes on separate tracks. You won't have to worry about hitting crazy cyclists, because they'll have their own little narrow lane. All those hippie cyclists will stop driving and get on their bikes, so there'll be fewer cars on the road, and the trips you take in your car will involve less traffic. They'll also park a dozen of their bikes in a single parking space, so it'll be easier for you to find parking downtown.
Above and beyond changing peoples' hearts and minds, articulating the material conditions I care about feels like it gets me a heck of a lot closer to concrete planning and action than philosophizing about the relative moral value of cycling and shaming drivers (myself included). When I start to think about the material goals I have in mind, everything feels much more grounded and real and a lot less scary. It feels like I could actually make progress towards the moral endpoints I care about, as far away as they might be.