Over the past year or so, I’ve been trying to come up with a more
cohesive political ideology. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to
frame problems in the world, effective strategies for activism and what I want
the world to look like. I feel pretty secure in my beliefs and opinions (though
they’re constantly evolving), but I don’t really have a good label to easily
explain myself to other people. Liberal implies a faith in gradual reform and
the state that I no longer have. Socialist doesn’t include my environmental
convictions, and assumes the continued existence of a large, centralized state.
Marxist has similar issues, plus some not-so-great historical connotations.
Just saying environmentalist implies looking to the state for solutions to environmental
problems, and doesn’t address the intersectionality of environmental and social
justice. Deep green implies being anti-civilization and/or a primitivist, which
I’m not. Feminist is great, but it doesn’t say much about my environmental or
political convictions. Left-of-center is accurate, but really general. Anti-capitalist
is probably accurate, but throwing that one out means explaining the difference
between a market-based economy based on equal exchange versus a corporatist
economy where the state exists largely to protect the interests of capital at
the expense of most people and the environment. Anarchist come pretty close too,
but most people grossly misunderstand what anarchism means, and I don’t feel
like I’ve read enough about the history of anarchist thought to identify myself
as such without some qualifiers, since historically, anarchists have advocated
a number of things I definitely don’t agree with. I like the term
“communalist”, which I came across in the writings of Murray Bookchin, but if
I’m asked to explain my politics to someone, no one is going to understand what
that means.
I’m not sure labels are really conducive to meaningful political
discussion anyway. I’ve read enough stories of self-identified Republicans
becoming environmental activists when the river by their home started being
polluted by mine tailings or feedlot runoff to know that the labels we choose
for ourselves are rarely fixed or immutable. I still find myself
self-identifying with the Democratic Party at times (eg. “We lost twelve seats
in the last election”), because, as much as I hate the faux-democracy our
federal political system is, I understand that some little things I care about
(funding for NGOs who provide comprehensive reproductive healthcare in developing
countries) fare much better under a Democratic administration. People round up
or round down for labels all the time—how many people are really 100% straight
or gay? In my experience, labels of any kind—sexual orientation, political
affiliation, relationship status, sometimes even gender—are best used as
starting points for conversation, and shouldn’t be taken as accurate, complete
summaries of who someone is or what they believe. But in spite of their
limitations, labels can be useful.
The problem for me with not having a label is that I can’t
self-identify as part of a group. Saying you’re a Democrat might not be a
perfect summary of your political beliefs, but most people who hear you say it
would assume that you’re pro-choice, pro-unions, into redistribution of wealth
and have at least a vague sense of concern about the environment. Popular
reactions to “socialist” and “libertarian” might not be as accurate, but still,
if you throw either one of those out, people have a general idea of what you’re
talking about. In contrast, if you say that your political ideology is desde abajo y a la izquierda (from below
and to the left), you’re going to have some explaining to do. Which isn’t
always a bad thing—explaining your chosen terminology can be a teachable
moment. When my roommate freshman year told me she identified as “queer” rather
than “bisexual”, we had a great conversation about what that word means to her,
which segued into a nice discussion about sexual identity in general. But
sometimes, just for the sake of making conversations easier, I wish I had a
better-understood word to describe where I am on the political spectrum.
In lieu of an appropriate label, though, I feel like I should lay out
some of my fundamental beliefs. There are a lot of things I believe, but these
are the ones I feel pretty solid about and think are important.
- While authentic, community-level democracy is not a panacea and won’t guarantee solutions to problems, it’s a necessary prerequisite for addressing almost all social and environmental problems and injustices. This means that every community needs to have sovereign authority to decide what happens to it, free from outside coercion. This means that if the people of Intag, Ecuador say they don’t want a copper mine in their cloud forest, the copper company goes away instead of spreading lies, hiring paramilitaries and getting the Ecuadorian state to back them.
- One of my former high school teachers, Steve Miranda, told me that if your school is too big for everyone in it to sit in a circle in the morning and check-in with each other, then your school is too big. I pretty much agree with this point, and I think the same should be said for governed bodies. Once all the people a decision affects can’t sit around and debate that decision, you lose a ton of democracy in the process. Which explains why federal policy is a complete nightmare, state policy is better but still really bad, and city/county-level policy is better yet, but still pretty bad.
- Related to the above two points, so many of our problems are connected to the existence of the state (large, centralized power) and the way it defends class interests. I’m pretty sure reform can’t fix this (if electing Obama didn’t prove that, I don’t know what will). But I don’t have much of an idea of feasible ways to transition from the federal system we have now to authentic, local forms of democracy. I just know that it really, really needs to happen.
- The pervasiveness of rape in our culture is not an anomaly; it’s a natural byproduct of the way our culture constructs sexuality. Combatting rape and sexual violence requires taking on rape culture, including victim-blaming, the virgin-whore dichotomy, the stigmatization of sex in general and the stigmatization female sexuality in particular. Which has everything to do with attempts to limit access to reproductive healthcare (which is, as far as I’m concerned, a form of violence against women).
- Defensive rights trump offensive rights (thanks to Derrick Jensen for this one). My right to live next to a healthy, functioning forest (and that forest’s right to exist) trump your perceived right to cut it down in order to make money. My right to breathe clean air and not live on a dangerously warming planet trump your right to burn coal, even if you have that whole “private property” thing to fall back on. My right to the integrity of my body trumps your perceived right to rape me or make laws about whether or not I’m legally obligated to carry a fetus to term.
- Food security (all people having access to enough food to sustain them) isn’t enough if we really want to fix our food system. We need food sovereignty, which means that communities actually have control over the means of production for their food, and that food is sufficient, nutritional and culturally appropriate.
- In addition to drastic social and political changes, our culture needs to re-think some of our core beliefs, particularly the sense of entitlement so many people have. We’ve gotten locked in this mentality that food should be cheap and easy to produce and prepare, that power is available with the flick of a switch. We’ve grown a bit soft around the edges and forgotten how to take care of ourselves, and we’re going to need to re-learn that sometime before oil runs out.
- In spite of the many serious problems in the world, I have been extraordinary fortunate and blessed with an easy, happy and fulfilling life. While I recognize that life is a product of extreme privilege, it also serves as a reminder of what’s possible for everyone if we’re able to be radical and visionary enough to make it happen.
No comments:
Post a Comment