Beyond Activistism

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Activists unconsciously echoing factory bosses? The parallel isn't that far-fetched, as another German, Theodor Adorno, suggests. Adorno -- who admittedly doesn't have the last word on activism, since he called the cops on University of Frankfurt demonstrators in 1968 -- nonetheless had a good point when he criticized the student and antiwar movement of the 1960s for what he called "actionism." In his eyes, the movement displayed an unreflective "collective compulsion for positivity that allows its immediate translation into practice." Thus people who see themselves as radical agitators actually end up living out the pragmatic empiricism of the dominant culture -- "not the least way in which actionism fits so smoothly into society's prevailing trend." Actionism, he concluded, "is regressive

. . . it refuses to reflect on its own impotence."

It may seem odd to cite this just when activistism seems to be working fine. Protest has been on an upswing in recent years. But is action enough? We pose this question precisely because activism seems so strong. The flip side of all this agitation is a corrosive and aggressive anti-intellectualism. We object to this hostility toward thinking -- not only because we've all got a cranky intellectual bent, but also because it limits the movement's transformative power.

Activistism as an ideology renders taboo any discussion of ideas or beliefs, and thus stymies both thought and action. Activists who treat ideas as important -- who ask the difficult questions that push into new political terrain -- find this censorious hyperpragmatism alienating and may drop away from organizing as a result. But that's not the only problem. Without an analysis of what's really wrong with the world or a vision of the better world they're trying to create, people have no reason to continue being activists once a particular campaign is over. In this way, activistism plus single-issue politics can end up being self-defeating. Activistism is tedious, and its foot soldiers suffer constant burnout.

ACTIVISTISM IS INTIMATELY related to the decline of Marxism, which at its best thrived on debates about the relations between theory and practice, part and whole. Unfortunately, much of this tradition has devolved into the alternately dreary and hilarious rants in sectarian papers. Marxism's decline (but not death -- the three of us would happily claim the name) has led to woolly ideas about a nicer capitalism and indifference to how the system works as a whole. This blinkering is especially virulent in the United States, where bourgeois populism is the native radical strain and anti-intellectualism is almost hardwired into the culture.

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