Get Radical
We must understand and deal with the actual roots of political problems
The Supreme Court’s reactionary majority is apparently poised to overturn Roe v. Wade next month, which would horrifyingly allow states to ban and criminalize abortion (13 states have laws to this effect that automatically trigger in the event of Roe’s demise). Many liberals have referred to the court’s impending decision as radical. Nowadays, radical is often used in this way to mean extreme with a negative connotation. But it comes from the Latin word radicalis, which means “of or having roots.” So, etymologically, describing something as radical really means that it is aimed at the roots, base, or origins.
Resolving structural political problems requires locating and understanding their roots; if you cut off the visible parts of a weed while leaving the roots intact, it will usually grow back. Hence, socialists are correctly described as radicals because we diagnose injustices as systemic problems requiring systemic solutions. The way that liberals use radical to pejoratively describe both the Far Right and the Left is a way of passively equating them. But significant deviation from the status quo is obviously not inherently positive or negative. Providing decommodified universal healthcare is good, and banning abortion is bad; using power to do good things is good, and using power to bad things is bad. By definition, reactionaries cannot be radical because they have no interest in eliminating the origins of problems like the climate and ecological crisis, gendered and racialized oppression, and exploitation of the working class. They actually often believe the things that most of us see as problems (or the causes of said problems) are in fact good—the domination and destruction of a capitalist white Christian ethnostate.
The Right’s assault on bodily autonomy is not radical. In fact, stopping it and enshrining abortion as a human right requires radicalism. Tepid responses from establishment Democrats telling people to just vote often come across as tone-deaf and grating. These words ring particularly hollow given that Democratic House leadership has endorsed and actively campaigned for their caucus’s only anti-abortion member, Henry Cuellar, who is facing a primary challenge from progressive Jessica Cisneros. While Democrats are certainly preferable to Republicans, there is no 2022 scenario in which Democrats get to a filibuster-proof 60 seat majority in the Senate that could enact a law guaranteeing abortion rights, and the Supreme Court always looms as a threat to anything positive.
Of course, they are just a handful of unelected clerics in goofy robes and what they say could be ignored, but liberal institutionalists are incapable of doing that. As Alex Pareene wrote yesterday, "The legitimacy crisis is that our institutions are illegitimate." The Supreme Court is and always has been anti-democratic and unjust, and the same goes for the Senate and the Electoral College. The US Constitution, ratified in 1789, is the oldest constitution in the world. Its endurance is evidence not of its quality but of its oppressive effectiveness as a tool written by white male slave-owners establishing a settler colonial state that enshrines private property above all else. Capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy, and patriarchy are where the Right’s attacks on abortion rights, racial justice, the LGBT community, the environment, and everything else come from.
The contradictions are heightening, and beating back the Right and fighting for the transformative changes we need will be a struggle. “Rights—not just abortion rights—are fragile, contingent, and partial,” wrote Melissa Gira Grant on Tuesday. As evidenced by the fights for abortion rights and new constitutions across the world, voting is useful but woefully insufficient. We will need myriad tactics that can combine our interconnected struggles for various areas of justice and create feedback loops that can enhance each other. This sort of “kitchen sink” approach means that electoral campaigns, labor organizing, protest, direct action, political education, mutual aid, and tenant organizing all have roles to play. Assessing which tactics to use and how, when, and where to use them is up to our movements to figure out as we create a strategy that could fit the needs of this moment. Diligent and effective strategy is produced by taking stock of our present conditions and their causes while adapting as they continue to change.
Make no mistake, the conditions will change, and what direction is in some ways up to us. We can and must build and wield collective, working class power so we can defeat the Right and create new realities rooted in solidarity, regeneration, and collective care. Such realities can feel light years away from where we are now, but the future is unwritten and impossible to predict. All that I know is that we have to dig at the roots and see where that takes us. Only by embracing radicalism and understanding the need for transformative change can we sow the seeds of a better future. Radicalism is not only good, it is necessary.
What I’m Reading
From traditional practice to top climate solution, agroecology gets growing attention (Anna Lappé): Agroecology is both mitigation of our various ecological crises and adaptation to the warming world we are and will be inhabiting. This is a solid overview of what it is—a science, a practice, and a social movement.
A ‘Silent Victim’: How Nature Becomes a Casualty of War (Emily Anthes): War is deadly for both human and nonhuman nature, which is why it should be avoided and prevented at all costs.
Anatomy of an AI System (Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler): This is a fantastic examination of the embodied labor and nature that goes into producing and using an Amazon Echo.
