Revolutionary Praxis: Learning from 3.7 Billion Years of Evolutionary History
Social revolutionaries would be wise to learn from the most thoroughly tested system of praxis that has ever existed: biological evolution by means of natural selection.
The most advanced segments of the revolutionary movement - in the U.S., this is largely the non-communist, and non-anarchist (revolutionary) Left (admittedly a very small segment) - should take a hint from the several billion year old process of natural-selection-based, evolutionary-development of life on Earth: in particular that those forces which cannot compete for power, become irrelevant or, to be more blunt, die out. These new advanced-guard leaders, who hail from a sort of third camp of visionaries, strategists, and organization builders, must begin to synthesize the best of the past, and move forward with a bold new evolutionary development in program, message, vision, and organization.
A suggestion to relevant revolutionaries: watch an introductory film to evolutionary biology, read some Darwin, or get your hands on a genetics book. Read metaphorically, the demand for innovation in our movement could not be clearer; the need for bold new solutions and a comprehensive break from the past could not be more urgent.
1 comment
right on Brian. Although I identify strongly with the positive set of anarchist ideals, from what I can tell, the traditional anarchist movement is a dead end, or rather a repeating dead end. Something I often think about, and I may have mentioned this idea at the SEAC retreat, is about the use of language. I think that’s what you’re getting at in “synthesize the best of the past, and move forward with a bold new evolutionary development in program, message, vision, and organization.”
Traditional leftism has dug itself (with ample help from the powers that be) a pit that I don’t think it will get out of, in the US, at least. A project I would love to undertake (time for extra projects in SEAC?) is studying traditional leftist thought, and identifying new ways of framing them - based on values and a relevant critique of the status quo. I think this would involve dropping a lot of the old language that is inherently, or has become self-marginalizing. Anarchy is dead in the USA, burned by its own molitov cocktails, but the optimistic assumptions about human potential (I don’t talk about human nature) can live on and enter mainstream thought through new innovative ways of acting and communicating. I think a lot of other movements for justice have followed the same trajectory, environmentalism to some extent too, although things like environmentalism have been more absorbed by the “Spectacle” than squashed into irrelevancy, as most of the left has been. Time to take it back. Wouldn’t it be cool if the Threshold were a medium for this?
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