Against first-world third-worldism

This will make a lot of my readers, on both the left and the right, angry, but I’ve always been open about my views on these things, so be it.

Right now the topic of the day is Israel-Palestine. I have very little useful to say on this issue except what this guy said:

But I do have some criticism of a certain leftwing picture that has emerged in discourse about the situation. This view has been present for years, but these events have made the tensions around it clearer. On the view I am talking about, non-indigenous people living in, say, the US and Australia are, in some sense, the enemy- even to the degree of being fair game. More curiously, this view is being articulated by non-indigenous people living in those very places. So I don’t seem like I’m exaggerating, here’s an example:

For want of a better term, call this view Third-Worldism, as it is similar to, and ultimately a manifestation of, very similar views that bear that name. Perhaps the ultimate manifestation of this view, and one of the most extreme, is an old book: Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat- but for some reason, these ideas seem to be resurging in popularity in the Twitter/Tumblr age of online discourse.

Obviously, views like these take many forms- Gretchen’s line here is particularly extreme, but there are numerous other takes pointing in the same direction. Roughly speaking, that direction is: the potential agent and subject of liberation in Australia, the US, Canada, etc. does not include the white proletariat, or includes it only in a very provisional sense. Not all go as far as others, of course.

Here’s what I think of that.

1. On the most basic moral level, I find Gretchen’s view here repugnant. This is sad to me because I have quite a bit of respect for her Tweeting normally (she’s quite good, give her a follow). The morality and politics of living in a settled state have nuances, to be sure, nuances I do not propose to deal with in this essay- but certainly no one has a right to kill me or Gretchen- or almost anyone. I think a sincere and impartial love of humanity can’t possibly lead to the conclusion that either of us is fair game.

2. But there’s a more interesting problem here than the moral problem. The left is not just about abstractly supporting theses that you think are morally correct, it’s about concretely supporting potentially transformative movements. The left’s line shouldn’t be whatever would be the best possible outcome were it to happen, it should be the best feasible outcome to which you can positively contribute.

3. The leftwing political tradition has historically aimed for a form of moderate political realism- the view that the possibilities of every situation are constrained, and we need to take this into account in making our political calculations. Our aims should be moral, and motivated by love for humanity, but the situation means we have to be canny about it. Constraint and possibility are no less important to determining what we say and do than our desires are.

4. I like Gramsci’s metaphor of the left as the modern Machiavellian prince. Now I hasten to add that I don’t think that means we should be actively dishonest- Gramsci doesn’t think that either, but thinking of the left as aiming at Machiavellianism is a useful corrective to the naïve, wide-eyed view of radical politics that sees it as an alternative to the grubby world of real politics.

5. Radical politics must be real politics if it is to be effective. We’ve got to do the equivalent of shaking hands with babies and kissing constituents or whatever way round it’s supposed to be. We have to look around us and find people with the means and potential motive to make things better. For me, even if I disagree on some details, I think the Marxist picture is broadly right. The proletariat has the means to change things (because their labor runs the world) and the motive (because they are dealt out of property ownership). Both as individuals and as collectives we need to be strategic actors. We are not merely expressions of a primal scream, crying in the dark. I hear that scream too, but it needs to be harnessed. We have to help, and to help we have to think.

6. Even if, for want of a better term, third-worldist political views were in some overall sense morally right, (and from where I’m standing they’re not), such views have zero political agency in countries where white people form a majority. Any feasible progressive politics has to start from the premise of a shared proletarian cause. The numbers alone imply that. Even if, in some abstract sense, a very literal understanding of decolonization is what would make the world as good as it could be, that’s not going to happen, whereas a multi-racial socialist society built on solidarity for all might work. It’s a longshot, to be sure, and it’s only the ghost of a plan, one that will play out in historical processes that are unimaginably complex, and unforeseeable- with many local variants. However, as a starting point for action in the West, it seems much more realistic. This realism is a moral imperative- we have to try to help as well as we can. The potential progressive role of some white proletarians in countries without a clear settler majority is a more complex issue I don’t propose to tackle here, but I do think even in such cases, comradely cooperation in the pursuit of shared liberation should be the ideal.

7. People have lost their sense of agency because of the atomization of society. When you have an active group of people with political goals- short and long-term- that group will think strategically about the line they take and the activities they engage in. Fragmentary individuals just scream out their first moral impressions into the void, because it seems like there are no stakes, and they have no power anyway. As difficult as it is though, you need to cling on to your sense of agency if you want to have the best odds possible-however small- of making a difference. We must urgently recreate the engines of political collective action for this reason.