Social progress requires vision

I first became political in the struggle against the War in Vietnam. Very early in my awakening I remember going to a beautiful old church…for a draft card turn in, in downtown Boston. I think it was perhaps 1966. I was up in the balcony.

Students and others walked up to the pulpit and turned in their military draft cards as an act of resistance. I applauded, from the balcony, with many others.

When I was going home from that event, I had one of those moments that we all sometimes enjoy, a moment of clarification or insight. I realized I had applauded people for doing something I could do, but something I wasn't doing, and without having any compelling reason for not doing it.

Here was behaviour I appreciated, and that I had no persuasive reason to be avoiding, but yet which I wasn't engaging in. I decided to transcend that situation in the future. I decided never to applaud as a spectator what I could myself do and had no very good reason for not doing. If I admire some action, I told myself, and if I can do it, and if I have no good reason to not do it, if I have nothing morally better on my agenda – then I should do it.

It was a very simple realization. And thereafter I became much more politically active.

In organizing on my campus not long thereafter, I remember repeatedly trying to elicit understanding and support for our anti-Vietnam war movement, and repeatedly encountering a strange resistance.

I described the motives and suffering of the war, and was asked in response:

"And what are you for?" "What goal would make war go away?" "Why do you think fighting against the war makes sense, given that war and all the associated horrors of our existence are inevitable?"

I thought the questions were absurd. They annoyed me. They seemed like avoidance, and I answered harshly.

We had to end the Vietnam War…I spoke, asserted, even hollered…later there would be time for ending all war forever, for ending all the horrors of our existence.

The fact that I and other anti-war organizers didn't have good answers for how all of society should be restructured to eliminate the causes of war and other pain was no excuse for not opposing the war, I felt.

I was technically right about that, of course, but as an activist I now believe I was horribly wrong.

Showing that potential supporters' feelings and doubts aren't warranted or are illogical was a second best approach. It wasn't nearly as good as to respond positively, to offer a visionary answer that would address people's doubts and lead forward, that would provide hope, that would give direction, and that would address them on their own terms.

Over thirty years have passed since then.

If we were to create a stack of all the speeches and talks and conversations and books and essays about how capitalism hurts people that have been offered in those thirty years – and if we were to create another stack of all the speeches and talks and conversations and books and essays about an alternative to capitalism and how it could benefit people that have been offered in those thirty years…the pile documenting misery would touch the sky, perhaps reach the moon, and the pile describing a superior option would barely leave the ground.

The question what do we want still exists. People ask it all the time. And yet even after having given so much attention to what's wrong, and so little attention to what we want, we still continue to give this fair, urgent, and insightful question minimal attention.

I think that is a huge error.

I think our collective allocation of energies and insight between these two priorities, addressing what is wrong and its origins, on the one hand, and providing a vision of what we desire and its logic and implications, on the other, needs to be overhauled. We need to do more of the latter.

But why does answering the query "What do we want?" matter so much that we should allot much more time and energy to it?

Imagine I were to deliver a brilliant, moving, compelling speech about the ravages of old age. I enumerate how old age limits our options, oppresses us…and finally kills us. I document the pain and suffering, accurately, movingly. The facts are uncontestable. The reality is undeniably horrible. After all, aging limits everyone; it kills nearly everyone.

I finish this emotional and accurate talk and I say, okay, now join me in a movement against horrible, oppressive murderous old age.

Obviously no one joins me…in fact, everyone thinks I am crazy. People rightly realize that to form a movement against the inevitable, against aging is literally insane. And people are aware, as well, that eloquent accurate demonstrations of pain from aging have no bearing on their conclusion to ignore appeals to organize against aging. It is absurd to join a social movement against inevitable facts of life.

What we need to realize, certainly in the U.S.A., but I suspect in most places, is that for the tens of millions of people we need to communicate with – the speeches, talks, rallies, classes, and books that we offer about poverty, indignity, war, sexism, and racism, much less about wage slavery, sound precisely like speeches against aging.

They sound eloquent, they may induce tears and rage, but as to choosing our life path, they are beside the point.

People feel there is no alternative to a world in which these oppressive conditions predominate. They feel that fighting injustices is like fighting aging: it is useless. Even if we make gains they will be quickly wiped out by inevitable pressures reinstituting all the old rot.

And so people feel that our piling up descriptions of the pains induced by capitalism, the pains they most often know already from their own experience, is mere whining…and certainly not constructive. The point is, unless people believe that something better is possible, explaining the harm of capitalism, of racism, of sexism, is to their ears like explaining the pain caused by aging: it is an annoying impediment to getting on with life.

And they tell us so. Get a life, they say to us in the U.S., for example.

Recently a computer broke down in the Z offices, which is where I work, and also where I live. A fellow came to do some repairs, a young white man who owns his own small business. We talked about the bombing of Afghanistan while he worked, and for another couple of hours after.

I argued that the motives of the U.S. response were to delegitimate international law, to maintain our credibility as a thug willing to destroy those who defy us, and to create a war on terrorism to justify redistributing wealth upward to the rich, and draconian repressive measures for the poor, below.

He had no trouble understanding all this, seeing and feeling the horror of bombing a country with everything short of nuclear weapons even at the possible cost of millions of human souls starved to death. But he said, Michael, you need to understand, me and people like me. We don't want to hear this. We don't want you to say this to us. To make us face it over and over.

And I said, "Rather like you wouldn't want me to detail the suffering of an earthquake?"

He said, exactly. It is inevitable. There is nothing I or anyone I know can do to change it. I need to protect my family and improve their lives. What you want from me would waste my time. You are right about the facts, but it is only painful to my ears. I can't affect it. No one can affect it.

For this young computer repairperson and millions upon millions like him, like for the students I was trying to reach thirty years ago, only now much more so, a powerful impediment to becoming politically active is doubt that any better outcomes can be attained or maintained.

To build really large movements we therefore need vision.

We need vision to combat cynicism and doubt

We need vision to combat the idea that there is no alternative

We need vision to provide hope that sustains commitment, even for ourselves.

We need vision that conveys a positive and inspiring approach rather than making us sound like whiners and naysayers to people's ears.

And we need vision to know where we want to go so that our efforts will advance our aspirations rather than leading only in circles, or even worse, leading toward ends we abhor, as has happened often in the past.