The 21st century Left is lacking. I will use the first person plural when I describe the international anti-capitalist Left in all of its forms, because this conversation is one that we should be having amongst ourselves as a group. There are a few problems—our obsession with identity or else our complete dismissal of it, our struggle to come to terms with the failures of the 20th century, our totalitarian streak—that are essentially noise around the major issue: we have not presented a viable alternative to capitalism. Of course, the right-wing demand that we supply a kind of virtual reality detailing every aspect of the future is ridiculous and unfair, but it does point on the one hand to a dissatisfaction with our inability to detail our goals beyond criticism of capitalism, and on the other to our own discomfort with the failures of leftist movements in the Soviet Union and China. We are undoubtedly gaining in popularity, but to keep that momentum, we will have to rediscover our substance. And to access that substance, we have to examine our shared narratives and their language.
Our story is simple; within this simplicity lies its power. We claim that class antagonism is the engine of history, and that we have been propelled into an age of extreme disparities. The best of our storytellers, Karl Marx, was writing specifically within the context of the industrial revolution—it was in this context that Europe was convulsed by left-wing revolutions. Since we have long since buried the industrial revolution, many have insisted that Marxism has lost its relevance. But it is only the configuration of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie as the foremost classes that is outmoded, since those classes are no longer useful insofar as they relate purely to industrial societies.
In the era of industrialism, the Euro-American Left had a concrete purpose centered on the plight of the mistreated workers. Critically, the prominence of industry made the proletariat a significant class that was impossible to ignore, while the propaganda of the time glorified the worker as a white figure of masculinity. In other words, when white masculinity, perhaps arising from the suggestive aesthetic of industrialism, was central to the Leftist cause, communism was a powerful political force. Many today still believe that the Left should reorient itself towards the white male industrial worker, unwilling to realize that the category of white masculinity does not need any more empowerment, while the industrial worker is no longer a significant force in America (there is a large proletariat—it is just overseas in nominally socialist countries like Bangladesh, Vietnam, and China. Leftist activists there have a much clearer agenda than in the States, where liberal democracy pretends to ensure equal rights to everyone).
As a result of the increasing diversity of the Left in terms of gender and race, white-male-as-worker has ceased to be dogmatically glorified; in addition to the obvious benefits of this decentralization, it has also left a hole in ideology of the Left. Or, it has revealed what has always been a very thin veil between substance and bullshit: that the “hero” of our story is not actually a hero, and our story might not be as neat as we had previously presented it. But rather than recast our story with other oppressed people, we should keep that leading role open. By declaring that there are no heroes, we return the story to its bare features, the foundations. There should be no worship of any kind of archetypal figure—instead, we have to focus on the conditions that produce oppression, and then change them. That is the point of the story.
If we accept the mantle of Marxist revolutionary thought, that is, the challenge of reinventing society to abolish or at least minimize exploitation, then we need not be scared of the question, What comes after capitalism? We cannot pretend anymore that we can read the future; the future depends entirely on what we do now. The real question we should be scared of is, What happens now? Specifically, what are we, writers, editors, and readers of the Prog, supposed to do?
Historically, the left-wing press acted as a megaphone for revolutionary parties, spreading propaganda, news relevant to the party, news relevant to workers, and manifestos. At the Prog, we do not represent any party. As such, we have sort of brought a spoon to a knife fight: we are left with the vague task of representing the working class. However, again, if we accept the broader Marxist challenge, then our job is clear: not only form a base around which leftist students can gather, but also to relentlessly criticize ourselves and the world around us. Fundamental to this criticism is a reshaping of our revolutionary vocabulary. We can no longer rely solely on 19th and 20th century thought to confront 21st century problems. While I am a believer in turning to our foundational literature, we must do something with the literature—we must criticize it and ourselves so that the story becomes recognizable to our own lives. The Prog can lead in this task, but it’s one that must be carried by our readers. The effort must be communal and it must extend beyond Princeton, or it will fail.
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