Clara Jane Hendrickson | Another way

Leftovers | Reintroducing the political in leftist thought

By Clara Jane Hendrickson 07/01/15 11:21pm

This past week, I attended an event at the Free Library of Philadelphia hosted by the editors of n+1, a small New York-based literary and social criticism magazine. At the event, one of the editors, in a jab at a recent piece published about the magazine, pointed to the political datedness of its author and the irony of his belonging to an Althusserian tradition. A woman approached the editor at the end of the event and commented, “Mentioning Althusser to a public audience at the Free Library creates a troubling knowledge barrier.” The editor responded with, “Well, how many blue collar people do you know?”

The editor’s accusation represented the codification of an American left whose culture, ideology and tactics seem to be frighteningly out of touch. The goals of liberals seem more bent on proving a moral high ground than strengthening any political orientation.

There exists an alarming disconnect between those theorizing, writing, protesting and occupying in the name of class injustice, and the institutions and practices of power these efforts claim to reject. This chasm has solidified the left’s role as one of calling out injustice from the marginalized periphery rather than pushing for and achieving concrete demands.

Of course, many leftists would see this as proof of successful fringe politics and grassroots anti-institutionalism. In response to the common criticism of the Occupy movement that it lacked clarity of vision and any sense of a political plan, one protester responded: “I don’t think anyone was seriously interested in seizing the apparatus of the state ... that kind of project has been successfully delegitimized over the past 30 years.” This commitment to an unfeasible tabula rasa fantasy politics stifles transformation in our own time. It is true that, under capitalism, the form of political institutions limits the politics that can be performed through them. However, there is nothing to suggest that capitalist political institutions totally dominate the potential to use and subvert them. The left must come to terms with the fact that, for better or for worse, no long-term project other than working through the state apparatus has become legitimate. We don’t need a revolution and we don’t need to overthrow capitalism overnight to ameliorate many of the injustices facing working people in this country.

The emphasis on diversity of tactics, intersectionality and collective liberation have often weakened the feasibility and sustainability of our left movements. Penn political science professor Adolph Reed so aptly warned us of “the long, slow surrender of American liberals” in his recent piece “Nothing Left.” He pointedly wrote that “the left has no particular place it wants to go ... It lacks focus and stability; its métier is bearing witness, demonstrating solidarity, and the event or the gesture. Its reflex is to ‘send messages’ to those in power, to make statements, and to stand with or for the oppressed.”

So, we continue to cling to our cardboard posters and chant “This is what democracy looks like.” Yet, we forget that too often our own, nonhierarchical movements lack democratic accountability and stifle necessary debate regarding the efficacy of our goals and tactics. We pat ourselves on the back for the number of things we call oppressive on a daily basis. We’ve replaced the vanguard of the proletariat with the vanguard of our own self-protection. We’ve set up safe spaces and even our classrooms antagonistically to political spaces, leaving little room for both the leaning into controversy and deepening of empathy that is much needed. We’ve expended more energy promoting trigger warnings than performing the dirty work of political change.

Even Toby Zeigler of “West Wing” provides us with this important heed when he intentionally calls World Trade Organization protesters tourists: “I’m sorry I was waylaid by a group of tourists. I don’t call them protesters. I’ve seen better organized crowds at the DMV.” While this kind of low-hanging fruit characterization is ubiquitously used as an excuse to not take seriously the concerns of the left, it points to the dangerous truth that, more than anything, we have become tourists in our own political system.

CLARA JANE HENDRICKSON is a rising College senior from San Francisco studying political science. Her email address is clara@sas.upenn.edu.

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