This week-end, I read this op-ed in the New York Times: ‘We are not the Resistance’, by Michelle Alexander. I suggest that you read it; it is relatively short. But for my purpose, the key point was this: she argues that resistance toward Trump is only one episode in the long social struggle for human freedom and dignity. She argues that this evolution toward human freedom and dignity is, by the words of Vincent Harding, “like a river”. While the speed at which we descend the river may vary across time, the destination is set. (Utopia?!? She doesn’t care to paint us a picture of it).
I truly disagree with this brand of social determinism. Yes, I can see – like her – that the trend in history has been toward more human freedom; for slaves, for common (ie: unlanded) man, for woman, now for LGBTs. However, I can also see the forces of traditional power continue to resist these changes, often undermining them in more subtle but no less pervasive ways. We might no longer own any other human beings, but the working poors are still living with great uncertainty and without assurance that they will have the basic necessities of life. We might all have a vote, but the power of campaign contributions continue to outweigh ‘popular feeling’ in influencing the nitty-gritty of law-making. The economic power of the rich is unchecked; as shown by the runaway inequality of our time. As for woman, yes, we are rising to equality; yet, the #metoo movement has shown that men’s attitudes have not changed as fast as the politically-correct slogans would suggest.
Yes, the trend is toward more human freedom and dignity for all – but the counter forces to that trend are such that the direction of social evolution cannot be pre-determined. And more importantly, it is not preordained that this trend will continue.
To support her thesis, she reframes Trump as himself the ‘Resistance’ against this “…new nation struggling to be born, a multiracial, multi-ethnic, multi-faith, egalitarian democracy in which every life and every voice matters.” She seems to forget that Trump was democratically elected by the majority of the electorate college. He might act like a tyrant today, but he was elected by a population, in an institutional form that might be two hundred years old but that still exists with well-known rules and norms, that desires order when all they feel is anarchy rising.
And that, my dear reader, is also a ‘natural’ reaction. Obviously, Trump didn’t sell the same type of hope as Obama. But what Trump promised – order and superiority of the strongest – appeases our fear of a future that we know to be uncertain.
With the pace of technological evolution, constantly causing social dislocations, and a labour force still recovering from the aftermath of the financial crisis, everyone – not just the elites, financial or intellectuals – now intuitively knows that their lives circumstances, including their economic livelihood, are bound to change several times within their lifetime. This pace of change is unprecedented. Ms Alexander extrapolates her trend toward human freedom from a past in which progressive changes took generations. Furthermore, she glances over the fact that some of these changes, like the ending of slavery, took a civil war to settle.
The pace of change today, especially since it is compounded by the spreading effect of information technologies, is creating a very unique time in history. We are at a threshold. Toward what, I do not know: I do not have Ms Alexander’s convictions in our destiny in human freedom and dignity. I am just too aware of the power of the reactionaries. People profit from the world as it is today, and those people do not join the ‘band-barge’ flowing down the river. They conspire, undermine, contrive. They usually have the capacity to capture the existing power structures, and use it to their advantage: Trump is clearly an example of that. Because he had financial power and celebrity status, and promised to fight the apparent lack of order of our era with good-old paternalistic sternness, he was able to become president. One who cares about progressive changes cannot dismiss his presidency as a stroke of luck.
I was deeply touched by the essay because, of course, I applaud the sentiment. Radical freedom and human dignity are great aspirations – I share the desire that they will be key pillars in our future. But her op-ed shows wishful thinking. One cannot win this ideological war without knowing one’s enemy, and giving them credit where it is due.
Because it is an ideological war. It is not only progressivism against traditionalism – though one’s attitude toward or against change is an important sorting characteristic. No, the novelty of our time is hyper-individualism. This degree of personal freedom, especially in choosing one’s values, clearly threatens social order. Radical individualism is perceived as a threat to social order not only because it challenges the established social structures, like the Churches and ‘traditional’ family values, but it raises doubt on the very idea that there can be social norms applied to all members of society. While some people embrace the freedom to define their values (usually the previously marginalized by social orthodoxies), others (arguably the majority) still prefer to defer to cultural authorities (Church, State, Patriarch).
Hyper-individualism is pitting both camps head-on. The proponents of hyper-individualism maintain that social cohesion necessarily constrains personal freedom within a certain range of actions (the social norms), and thus requires the exclusion of certain sub-groups (those who don’t abide by the norms), creating a us-vs-them mentality that is antithesis to personal freedom and the dignity of all. The opponents of hyper-individualism perceived in it a ‘free for all’: which it is since individualism implies ‘free for me’ and the reciprocity allows others ‘free for them’ too. In absence of moral precepts around which radical individuals can coalesce, there is great difficulty in maintaining group cohesion and collaboration, which are essential if society is to remain an organizing force and not descend into anarchy (where the wealthiest, the most bullish, the strongest prevails).
Ms Alexander recognizes this fact, noting that the current ‘resistance’ is organized only insofar as it is against Trump – the man. If Trump’s resistors were to pursue a positive goal, they would dissolve into thin air before they could formulate what that goal is: just like the Occupiers, who were another expression of this underlying cultural revolution.
Our historical path shows a progressive enlargement of ‘who matters in group decision-making’. It started with the village chief and his entourage, who later became king and aristocracy. The first democracies only included property owners, where even other forms of wealth acquisition (like the merchants) were excluded. Fast forward millenia, now everyone has a vote. But the institutions put in place to mediate political decision-making predate the enlargement of the constituency. The broader citizenry, both in terms of number of people and in the diversity of their values, is therefore constrained by an institutional structure that was not meant to include such a range of concerns. We – humanity – are in unchartered territory here. We have never tested how a society composed of hyper-free individuals can collaborate to create new institutions to represent their diversity.
This matters, a lot! With his quote of Javier Cercas (on Arts and Craft), Mark Hannam points out that: “by using old forms the novel is condemned to say old things, and only by using new forms can it say new things.” This applies to political structures too!!!
In the mean time, before new political structures can emerge, we are in for quite a bumpy ride! Humans are very uncomfortable with anarchy and uncertainty, even if only metaphorically in the moral, social and political spheres. Right now, Trump is as much a source of uncertainty as the hyper-individualists; this is in part why he is resisted (including by his close aides, as shown by the anonymous op-ed).
Notwithstanding her wishful thinking, Ms Alexander’s purpose and conclusion are valid. Her primary purpose is to reframe the current grass-root resistance against Trump in terms of a revolution in favor of human freedom and dignity – one with a long lineage of successful battles. I agree: there is a greater chance that we will get the future we desire if our goals are aspirational and our efforts are pro-active.
As a corollary, her conclusion is that resistance alone will not suffice. We, the hyper-individuals, have not yet found a way to come together into a common pro-active movement. We are not – yet – a revolution because we do not have a united voice. We are a cacophony – and in recent years, there is more yelling than conversations going on.
For my part, I will add that, most importantly, we have lost sight of the fact that our radical individuality – the personal freedom of choices that we hold so dear – has led us into fragmentation, which itself serves to maintain the status quo very well.
I will not claim to have any solutions here. But if, as Ms Alexander suggests, the various fragmented resistances understand implicitly that incremental changes alone will not bring forth the changes we desire, then we have to start imagining – collectively – what it is we desire.
Here, thinking that our destination is preordained does not suffice! It is even counter-productive, since it absolves us from the responsibility to collectively define the future we want. We want a sustainable planet; we want economic justice; we want human freedom and dignity. But how will we embody those values into our institutions, into our culture, into our social norms? By following the revolutionary river? Sorry, this is not sufficient.
We need to map our way forward.