As the 2020 presidential season heats up (way too early, it's still early 2019!), I am continually reminded how much the term "progressive" has been co-opted by neoliberal interests.
My frustration has grown to the point where I believe it is necessary to change how I identify myself. The "Progressive PGH" identity seems to have largely run its course, and change is in the air.
To be honest, I have experienced a transformation of my politics over the next 5-10 years anyway. While I still think of "progressive" as someone roughly around Bernie Sanders' set of politics and principles, I no longer personally identify with that system. Despite calling himself "democratic socialist", Bernie has, at least in the modern era, not been particularly critical of capitalism and neoliberalism. He has called for expanded social programs and "safety nets", which is by all means a great step that goes far beyond what most politicians call for, but falls short of the system change that I believe is needed to address climate change and poverty.
I wrestled a bit with exactly what sort of politics I want to see. Simply screaming negative criticism of every candidate isn't a political stance; I need a vision of the future that I can point to. Whenever someone tells me I have to pick the lesser between the two evils, I can point to that vision and say "No, there's another option".
The problem with progressivism is that it is too much of a capitalist apologist framework. It seeks to cover up the problems of capitalism by claiming that if only we have more social programs, and take a firm stand against government corruption, everything will be fine. This isn't true, because capitalism relies on exploitation, meaning it will always generate corruption, and always exploit poverty no matter how many social programs you have. You can't fix capitalism, you have to oppose it. Same can be said for the similar philosophy of social democracy.
The problem with democratic socialism is that relies too much on a top-down approach. Many of the people I've met that refer to themselves by some variant of this term are largely followers of Marx -- or at least today's interpretations of Marx -- who envisioned that the transition to a more communist society (a classless society) would first transition through a socialist phase, in which the state government would be used to smash capitalism. Once capitalism is broken up -- private property ended in particular -- the government would then be dissolved into more localized, democratic community ownership. Firstly, I've not heard many recent socialists talking about dissolving government -- the focus has been entirely on capitalism so far, which often segues people into politics and the idea that political parties like the Democratic Party are the platform with which to take control of government and smash capitalism. As the political party has been co-opted by capitalist forces, this idea seems wildly unrealistic. It puts the cart before the horse, in my opinion. Second, the transition of centralizing power into a state government first is a dangerous move, one that was taken advantage of by autocrats like Lenin. Concentrating power is never a good idea, and so while I generally agree with the long-term goals of democratic socialists, I'm not a fan of the methodology.
Lately I've been reading about a number of other philosophies. Anarchism is a different take on socialism, calling for a much more bottom-up social revolution against oppression by both capitalism and authoritarian government, which is much more appealing to me. Bakunin, Kropotokin, Rocker, are some good names to read about along this line of thought.
Even better were those that came later, around the 1960s, who looked fusing socialism (particularly anarchist thought) with environmentalism. Perhaps the biggest name along this path for me was Murray Bookchin and his philosophy of social ecology. Bookchin opposed capitalism as well as large government, similar to anarchism, but instead saw the world as confederation of municipalities, democratically-run communities that put ecology and human rights first.
Bookchin's philosophy more than most other people I read strongly appealed to me. Interestingly, Bookchin's philosophy played an important role in the early days of the foundation of the Green Party, which is one reason the Green Party has such strong "eco-socialist" roots.
Another interesting source of inspiration was the London Green Left Blog, which looks to authors from all of these philosophies to talk about eco-socialism, a fusion of ecology and environmentalism with anti-war and civil rights politics, taking the best ideas from socialism and even more anarchist-leaning thought such as Bookchin.
To me, the future seems to be some flavor of eco-socialism. We can't stay stuck on old ideologies; even if some are appealing, we have to recognize that today's circumstances -- a worldwide economy, connected by the Internet, facing the global threat of climate catastrophe -- are different than anything faced by past generations. By necessity, we need something new -- informed by old radical thought, but adapted to today.
So I've decided to more explicitly join that movement by renaming my account. I've decided to use the handle Pittsburgh Green Left instead. "Green" because of the focus on ecology, as well as a call-back to the Green Party's key values. "Left" because of a general support of leftist ideologies, socialism and anarchism. The whole name of course is also a nod to the influential London Green Left Blog.
Therefore, the new blog will also be Pittsburgh Green Left -- update your bookmarks! I may transfer some of the most relevant blogs from here to there, but new posts will go there specifically.
