January 04, 2006: Becoming a Socialist
Who ever becomes a socialist, and why? Eric Hobsbawm once put the question this way:
Why do men and women become revolutionaries? In the first instance mostly because they believe that what they want subjectively from life cannot be got without a fundamental change in all society. There is of course that permanent substratum of idealism, or if we prefer the term, utopianism, which is part of all human life and it can become the dominant part for individuals at certain times, as during adolescent and romantic love, and for societies at the occasional historical moments which correspond to falling and being in love, namely the great moments of liberation and revolution. All men, however cynical, can conceive of a personal life or society which would not be imperfect. All would agree that this would be wonderful. Most men at some time of their lives think that such a life and society are possible, and quite a number think that we ought to bring them about. During the great liberations and revolutions most men actually think, briefly or only momentarily, that perfection is being achieved, that the New Jerusalem is being built, the earthly paradise within reach (Revolutionaries, pp. 294-95).
Hobsbawm immediately qualifies this observation with a recognition that "most people for most of their adult lives, and most social groups for most of their history, live at a less exalted level of expectation" (p. 295). It is also quite true, I would add, that not all nascent revolutionaries are initially attracted to socialism; indeed, these days many are drawn more to anarchism or to radical religious or ecological politics. Nonetheless, I think that much the same process applies for socialists - even for those socialists who have eventually become hardened, embittered, or simply demoralized over the course of their political lives. In my experience, at least, most socialists are not initially formed through calculation of self-interest or even from a sense of duty, but by rejecting what Herbert Marcuse termed the sheer "obscenity" of capitalist society. According to Marcuse's stinging indictment,
This society is obscene in producing and indecently exposing a stifling abundance of wares while depriving its victims abroad of the necessities of life; obscene in stuffing itself and its garbage cans while poisoning and burning the scarce foodstuffs in the fields of its aggression; obscene in the words and smiles of its politicians and entertainers; in its prayers, in its ignorance, and in the wisdom of its kept intellectuals (An Essay on Liberation, pp. 7-8).
Although such revulsion can obviously collapse into despair or resignation, it can equally trigger a desire for a profoundly different world. We could call this desire the "utopian" or perhaps the "romantic" moment of political radicalization.
Comments
The motives which Hobsbawm and Marcuse stress are idealism and indignation, respectively. What role does anger play? Self-defense? Intellectual conviction?
It might be interesting to talk about whether different motives lead to different kinds of commitment. I met a right-wing yuppie at a party once who disparaged the radical campus activists he went to school with, suggesting that many had joined the movements for social and personal reasons which had little to do with the causes they supported. I thought that was inevitable and couldn't see why it would be an issue.
Posted by: Mark Phillips | January 5, 2006 05:22 PM
I think you've introduced a legitimate point about the complexity--overdetermined?--motivations for collective action. For example, it would be interesting to use "just war theory," as Norman Geras once did in an essay on "Our Morals: The Ethics of Revolution," to justify revolution as popular self-defense against oppression. Unfortunately, Geras lately has dropped his previous insistence on self-emancipation of the oppressed "from below," as opposed to paternalistic salvation "from above."
Posted by: Anonymous | January 5, 2006 06:26 PM