the point is to build a mass party you can live with

Though I have more trepidation than he does, given my stature as a grizzled old man, I thought that this piece by Bhaskar Sunkara about expanding the socialist movement was good.

I do worry. The problem with a "new" anything is that it necessarily lacks institutional memory, and I hope that they understand: liberals redbaiting and lending a hand to conservatives in trying to expel the left is not some rare event. It's endemic to American liberalism. The Sister Souljah moment is not a repudiation of liberalism but something of a liberal sacrament. It's crazy for me to think that there are people out there too young to remember the 2002-2005 days, when liberals had great enthusiasm for the opportunity to expel the left. Bhaskar and any other young Marxists must understand that liberal-left alliances can be useful and necessary, up until the point they try to push you out onto an ice floe. And when they come they come for the pinks as well as the reds. Whenever the forces of reaction are slitting throats, there's always liberals around to wipe the blood off the knife.

But given the boundaries of the possible, and the demographics of the country, and the desperate need for change, you've got to try to move them anyway. I don't see much alternative. I hold out hope that anti-militarist libertarians (note: no, not Rand Paul) can be a source of consistent solidarity against our violent government, but they are a small portion of libertarianism, which is itself a tiny ideology. So I don't see much alternative to trying to move leftist liberals, those who have a "both/and" attitude towards activism and partisan politics. The "vote for Obama and write to your Congressman!" crowd is beyond moving. (Writing to legislators is almost exactly like prayer in both its measurable effect and the pride it inspires in those who undertaking it.)

As far as the liberal urge to purge goes, I guess we burn that bridge again when we come to it.

That opinion, I'm afraid, is not very cool. Jacobin has been catching some of the expected flak lately, given their recent success. They are guilty of several of the Lefty Seven Deadly Sins, including Being Popular, Getting Positive Attention, and Convincing Others. This cannot be countenanced, and so they are being punished. Mostly by anarchist, by my lights, but by the general mass of the "however extreme you are, +1" crowd. Well, those people are better than the alternative. I'd rather have an anarchist calling me a fascist than listen to Jon Chait doing his thing. I just want to say: the point is to build a mass party you can live with. Me, I can't live with the party of Obama (a more passionate army than the Democrats) or the centrist libs or similar. But I also can't much stand the world we have, so I am willing to listen to a smart, committed guy like Sunkara trying to drag the kids to their left. Call me a squish.

I confess to a certain bias from experience; anarchists were always the rich kids at rallies who wanted to fuck up the neighborhoods of the exact people we were trying to rally to the cause, and they had a tendency, with age, to give up politics altogether. We worked for months to reach out to the people of a poor Hartford neighborhood, and some self-identified anarchist asshole smashed somebody's sideview mirror, somebody from that neighborhood's sideview mirror. (Sorry to disappoint: I'm not expressing a nascent desire to exercise coercive power on that guy. I'm identifying him, accurately, as an asshole, as I did 8 years ago when it happened.) You can find an awful lot of that sort of thing if you look around just a little bit. I'm not trying to rustle jimmies or paint with too broad a brush. I'm just trying to be honest with you. That said, there are anarchists I love deeply, and when the exigence is against aggression and violence, they can be great allies. They are only responsible for expressing their conscience. Only they can determine what their responsibility is. I would never suggest that they have to get into lockstep with anyone else, and I remain open to the possibility that looking to liberals for solidarity is foolish. For myself, the stakes are simple: if the number of people you consider sufficiently righteous to break bread with numbers in the dozens, and you have no credible narrative for how that changes in the near future, then I don't know how you get the world you want. But that's my standards. I'm not the movement police.

If they can't live with the mass party that some other people are building, they don't join it, and they keep working their work.

I feel absolutely no conflict or complication with my relationship to the left, or to the movement, or the struggle, or whatever the fuck. I understand why people get anxiety about those things. But I just don't have time for it, and it makes no fucking whatsoever to me if somebody calls me either an "emo lefty" from my right or a fascist sympathizer from my left. Remember: no enemies because they are to my left. I just don't have the energy for it, and I don't know why some people are so consistently susceptible to being thrown into an existential crisis by people who are calling them out as phonies or collaborators. I never asked anybody's permission to see myself in solidarity with them, and I don't need anybody to like me in order to see them as useful for the cause. Do you want to change the miserable condition that exists on this earth? Cool. The rest is noise.

Update: It's been pointed out to me that condemning anarchism through my anecdote and (real, but of course limited) personal experience was a shitty thing to do. I retract it, and I apologize for saying it in the first place. My broader point-- that the goal, to my lights, is to build a mass party without sacrificing the beliefs that are truly important to you-- stands. I suppose the details are everything.