it’s really stark how parasitic the cosmopolitan city and ethics is on the economics, culture, and social relationships of virtually the entire area/polity around it. like how can we truly reconcile the cosmopolitan nature of our societies and socialism.
my gut reaction is that you cant.
i live 40 miles from NYC and my rent is still tied to rent in NYC. if I want to experience some culture or art, i need to go to NYC. if i want a good paying job, I pretty much need to go to NYC.
think about it, like, the cosmopolitan city sucks in all of the creative, economic and social forces into a concentrated area. it destroys the communities and cultures of people who dont live in the city. and it leaves basically just strip malls and commuter towns in it’s wake.
it also hamstrings radicalism, imo. think about the last time radical leftism was really “successful” in the united states. it was before the end of WW2, when cosmopolitanism saw the mass importation of culture and community.
boots riley has talked about this somewhat, about how the successes of leftism were lost when radicals began flocking to the cities and left the rural folks in the dust.
ive been thinking a lot recently about how damn cosmopolitan modern leftism is, and how weak it is compared to leftism of 100 years ago. like we’re all proletarians but we have no real connection to the working class movement of 100 years ago. none of us work jobs anymore that actually matter. we can’t go on strike and completely shut down a city like they used to 100 years ago. we don’t have jobs where we’re the ones who are building and fixing things, and if we stop working things come to a screeching halt. it’s harder to grow and organize a labor movement when we’re atomized and our work, if withheld from capitalism, is not a big deal.
the labor movement had power when it could fight capitalism and stand on two legs. we dont even have legs to stand on. we’re powerless because we don’t have jobs and specialization that give us power in this economic system. we’ve let the political center or right completely take over the working class jobs that you think of when you think working class jobs. construction workers, tradespeople, laborers, etc. these are all jobs that we’re going to need to build socialism but almost no socialists have these jobs. we need to ask ourselves why imo.
This is a good point. I think I can add something because it’s the same in the UK. Thinking about London Birmingham Manchester, probably Glasgow, Belfast and Cardiff as well - these huge cosmopolitan cities clean up all of the social, economic and cultural forces and leave cities/towns/villages struggling. And there’s an elitism amongst the left from big cities towards poorer/smaller cities. Living in a large cosmopolitan city is a badge of honour. You’re seen as cultured, understanding, worldly. The rest are seen as uncultured, thick, not worthy etc. And when people talk about poverty they typically visualise inner cities or housing estates. But rural poverty is huge too like our former fishing towns, villages that have been abandoned and starved - they’re not all posh tory retreats.
I can’t remember who but one of the old anarchist writers wrote about needing solidarity between towns people and rural people - these days it’s more like cities, smaller cities, towns and rural people. It was an issue then and it’s an issue now.
And yeah where and what does the working class left look like these days? Thinking about the anarchism in particular, Martin Wright said why are there more fucking academics than binmen in our movement? Or as I put it, the women at Greggs.
Yep, I’m totally dismayed by the utter abundance of anarchists that seemingly only want to shudder themselves behind the walls of academia or education more generally. I guess another tendency is technology, there’s lots of anarchist programmers and tech people. But like, these jobs are replaceable and functionally powerless jobs.
For example, a NYC garbage collector makes more money than a teacher in NYC. They have a long history of going on garbage strikes and there was one just a few years ago. We’ve let the traditionally-thought-of working class jobs be totally consumed by the politically apathetic or the politically aware right.
We need to be organizing within industries and jobs that give us real power. Not necessarily jobs that make us rich (Tradespeople in the US make a pretty comfortable living after some years) but jobs which give us the power to bring the system to it’s knees. I mean, a lot of the jobs required to build socialism (when we get there) are primarily labor jobs… There’s going to be a lot less bullshit bureaucratic jobs under socialism and we’re gonna need all hands on deck. Practically no one who spends their free time expounding the benefits of socialism on social media has the actual practical skills to go out and build socialism when and if it finally happens on a large scale.
sanitation workers are incredibly vital to keeping cities running though, i don’t get what you’re saying by pitting them against other jobs that “matter”
My comparison was to show that sanitation workers get paid more because at the end of the day, they have real power in the eyes of the ruling class (collected trash is something we take for granted and garbage workers usually get their demands met when they go on strike because conditions rapidly deteriorate if you don’t).
I don’t want to pit different jobs against each other, but the simple fact remains that the majority of radicals can’t shack up in academia and other jobs which relatively lack power compared to other jobs and be surprised when our movement is going nowhere. As far as I’m concerned, pretty much any job which isn’t blatantly in service of capitalism is important and will have it’s place in socialism, but like, we can’t build socialism with 100 academics and 1 worker.
Yeah, if academics kick off about an issue who cares? I’m sure it raises eyebrows in their world but it doesn’t outside of the university bubble. But when lorry drivers went on strike in 2000 in the UK they almost brought the country to a halt in 8 days. Lorry drivers, farmers, taxi drivers took part in widespread action over the cost of fuel, refusing to work and blocking oil refineries. Pumps ran dry, supermarket shelves were emptying, people took time off work because they couldn’t run their cars or get public transport. The army was drafted in. Capitalism was in crisis, in just 8 days. This is where radicalism lives and breathes, in the industries that keep the capitalist show on the road.
what’s so insidious about this ‘self-love’ mentality is the assumption that with enough bubble baths, prioritisation of the self/growing individualism, kale smoothies and exercise, you can overcome the obstacles around you and be a functional human being in the current socio-economic system. used as a bridge between the alienated individual and capitalism, the growing desire for individualistic self-help fuels the tools required for surviving capitalism, justifying our psychological isolation, masking the fact that human beings require communal living and a natural environment in order to flourish. what’s also deeply unsettling about this mentality is that it suggests that mental illness is merely subject to internalised thought patterns, removing the necessity of understanding the root of the conditioning, thereby also removing the contribution of one’s environment in altering one’s cognitive processes. this, in turn, removes responsibility in the external environment, making it easier to ignore and justify oppression, exploitation and injustice, because one is told that with enough positive thinking, they’ll realise things aren’t so bad after all.
it is a form of cultural gaslighting that has swept parts of europe into one connected sphere of blissful ignorance, manipulating ancient forms of spirituality to suit the needs of the market, shifting us further away from eachother & active participation in our communities
