Community and Leftist Politics
It seems that for so many leftists, our model of politics is a fundamentally liberal one, despite or protestations to the contrary. In saying this, I don't our desired policies or institutions. Rather, I mean the very model of the political subject we have in mind. We envision organizations or parties that are composed of a series of abstract individuals united primarily by a shared ideological commitment and then we say we want a socialist future. How exactly does that come about among people who remain largely alienated from each other? People who barely know each other and only care about one another in an abstract way as "comrades"? The future we want certainly involves building political power but, perhaps more foundationally, it involves tearing down the walls that this white supremacist, settler (and yes, capitalist!) society has erected between us. It requires welding all of these abstract persons who come to our organizations into a genuine community of care from which solidarity emerges, not as an abstract moral injunction, but as an obvious practice of being in community with others. If we're not building living communities, then what motivates us to *care* about the people we fight beside?
Yak ikwo uwem ada inemesit osok mbufo.

























