Ideology: What Is It, Why Have It?
Most of this article was conceived and written back in the early 1970s. It is excerpted from a book published in 1974. The book was and is titled What Is To Be Undone, a word play on Lenin’s famous title. The article may feel a bit academic, something some philosophy class might conceivably address. And since I can’t go on forever, it may also feel like it lacks sufficient examples along the way. But there is reason in the method.
I want to look at classical ideologies in an effort to discern flaws that we need to escape. I will be looking at them from the vantage I had in 1972-1973 which was when some people think leftists took a wrong turn away from classical ideologies. But did we? Well, that was when I, for one, got serious about trying to think about new ideology. So the core writing in this article is partly a communique from then, partly a time capsule message from then. I will however interject some more current takes on the material at times, as we proceed.
But still, why talk about ideology in general, much less abstractly? Well, it is to get on the same page, or at least to know what page we are all on, as we start to get into more specific assessments. And it is also to get some idea of what kinds of assessments and what kind of approach to take.
This excerpted chapter started with an offset quotation from the then very popular historian of science, Thomas Kuhn:
“What a person sees depends upon both what he looks at and also what her previous visual-conceptual experience has taught him to see. In the absence of such training there can only be in William James’s phrase, ‘a bloomin’ buzzin’ confusion’.”
Then the chapter proceeded: Wanting to get beyond “confusion,” we want to present and then assess Classical Marxism Leninism to develop insights for improving it to fit our own modern contexts. But what in Marxism Leninism should we focus on? What aspects of the whole should we emphasize? In what order should we discuss those aspects? Can we give our study of Marxism Leninism or any proposed ideology an initial thrust to help organize the whole effort? For that matter, in a prior sense, can we even motivate studying classical ideology by arriving at a clear understanding of how theories are generally developed and judged?
I wrote back then that we base our approach on a general store of scientific training and an extension of Thomas Kuhn’s analyses of similar issues because those analyses seem the most accepted, the most suited to our ends, and the most correct of any available.
Kuhn says the natural sciences [like physics, chemistry, biology, and so on] move forward by way of alternating evolutionary and then revolutionary periods. During evolutionary development a widely held collection of thoughts, methods, beliefs, and so on, are advanced in accord with their own internally determined dictates. In contrast, during revolutionary development the same “consciousness collection,” or, as Kuhn calls it, the same paradigm, is contested and finally negated and replaced due to developments extending beyond its own previous focus.
In the evolutionary period we have what Kuhn calls normal science. The generally accepted paradigm is applied to ever greater numbers of phenomena. Scientists improve, verify, enlarge, and adapt it by constant reapplications. Essentially, in Kuhn’s words, they engage in “puzzle solving.” They try to fit the world to their paradigm’s categories and dynamic expectations. They guide their efforts according to their paradigm’s dictates. They approach problems because their paradigm orients them to do so and because it says they can succeed in finding solutions. Closely examined, whether historically or in the contemporary laboratory, their enterprise seems an attempt to force nature into the preformed and relatively inflexible box that the paradigm supplies. But during the evolutionary period, as the many new problems to which any paradigm gives rise are being sorted out and solved, some prove intractable. Others, also intractable, are discovered accidentally, outside the realms toward which the paradigm actually pushes its practitioners. Eventually there is an accumulation of problems which practitioners find important and troubling, but which are seen as unimportant within the context of their paradigm and are in any case unsolvable by it.
At that point, many practitioners simply put the problems aside (and often don’t even notice them in the first place) due to their normal-science faith in their well-tested beliefs. Other practitioners, however, can’t help but see the importance of the problems and they begin to try to alter their paradigms as normal science reaches what Kuhn calls a state of “crisis activity.”
Crisis resolution comes by way of supercession of old paradigms by new ones. The scientist who saw reality in terms of one set of beliefs, concepts, and methods before such resolution sees it by a different set after. Practitioners’ world views alter. But the debate between old and new during transition is typically extremely impassioned and confused. Each side approaches issues differently. What one side says is important evidence in favor of its paradigm is felt irrelevant by the other and vice versa. Nonetheless, there is a gradual transition to a new paradigm and then to a new normal science.
I interject, my reaction to the problems of the Sixties back then (and still) was to feel that our ways of thinking, evaluating and doing were insufficient to ward off problems that severely hurt our efforts. As a result, I felt we needed a new paradigm or ideology. I thought the way to decide if that feeling was valid was to critically consider paradigms that were then available. Another option would have been to just double down with one of them, as some did, or to decide we didn’t need shared views and strategy at all, with some others. Instead, I and some like me, opted for a critical evaluation, and thus emerged What Is To Be Undone.
In moving from the hard to the social sciences, details alter but nonetheless Kuhn’s model remains at least roughly applicable. Thus regarding “revolution-aiding science” meant to understand the world in order to to change it, so that paradigm equaled ideology; ideology equaled theory, strategy, and practice; and classical ideology equaled Marxism Leninism, Anarchism, or Maoism.
The chapter continued: There are three questions to answer to apply Kuhn’s model to our subject. First, what is the purpose of a revolutionary paradigm and of each of its parts? Second what are the parts in more detail, including potential roots of their strengths and weaknesses? And third, how do the parts interrelate to form a whole and what are the whole’s specific dynamics? For any ideology, do they work for us, or fail us?
A physics paradigm of the kind Kuhn centers his studies on informs its holders about the real physical world and gives them ways of understanding and affecting it. It guides their endeavors by giving methods and directions of concern.
Similarly a “revolution-aiding” paradigm, or an ideology, informs its holders about the socio-political-economic world, gives them ways to understand and affect that world, and guides their efforts by providing methods and areas of concern.
Yet even though each type paradigm seems to do pretty much the same things for its practitioners, the ultimate purposes of the two types of paradigm—natural science and social “revolution-aiding”—are somewhat skewed from one another. With a physics paradigm the ultimate emphasis is on knowledge. With a “revolution-aiding” paradigm the ultimate emphasis is on change.
For both the physicist and the social revolutionary, knowledge and activity are to serve each other. Each must provide guidelines and ways of improving the other. And yet in the last analysis, the physicist does experiments to further knowledge; while the revolutionary uses knowledge to further experiments, which is to say struggle.
There is a critical inversion of theory/practice priorities and it is this that complicates a Kuhnian analysis of socio-political paradigm development, and that must be recognized to answer the question, “What is the purpose of a revolutionary paradigm?” and to get at the more detailed analysis of the purposes of revolutionary theory, strategy, and practice.
Normal science in the revolutionary context is the process by which, for example, Marxist Leninists, Anarchists or Maoists pursue studies of the world and engage in practice in accord with their ideology’s dictates. Thus each group sees things somewhat differently from the others, employs somewhat different priorities, and so on, but at least when functioning normally, each moves steadily and calmly forward in self-consistent ways.
Like for the hard scientist functioning normally, day-to-day normal revolutionary practice encounters few surprises and is essentially a puzzle solving (and doing) dynamic that occurs very much in expected and preordained ways. Crisis revolutionary practice is, on the other hand, the process by which contending paradigms or ideologies struggle with one another and with non-revolutionary alternatives for social dominance. They debate each others’ suppositions, and even more than with the hard sciences (because of the extra involved interests) the debate is a tortuous and even violent one in which no side gives much credence to the formulations of any other. Resolution would be the success of any one revolutionary paradigm in gaining nearly full domination over all the others.
For the purposes of this exploration, however, we begin by asserting such a resolution, with Clasical Marxism Leninism as a core around which normal activities proceed. Later, after dealing with Classical Marxism Leninism as if it were the only ideological possibility, we admit the existence of Anarchism, Maoism, and some contemporary neo-Marxist views and consider them too.
Thus for the moment our available revolutionary paradigm is Classical Marxism Leninism. And we [or at least I, in the early 1970s, and now too] feel a definite crisis. The “anomalous problems” to which it denies importance, and, in any case does not help us solve related concerns, revolve around usability, racism, sexism, authority, socialization dynamics, the relationships between consciousness and general day-to-day activity, the dynamics between social and movement relations and people’s consciousnesses needs, and feelings, the nature of bureaucracy, the ability of people to understand local situations and analyze local tactics, and to settle on what we seek, or vision. It is a substantial list. Our critical study thus feels justified by the state of crisis we perceive in Classical Marxism Leninism’s abilities to handle today’s crucial revolutionary problems.
I interject, this was as I saw the problems existed coming out of the Sixties, when, remember, one current 2026 interpretation of the emerging situation is that we activists made the mistake of getting tricked, coerced, or enticed into jettisoning too many Classical insights. It is that view that I am currently assessing even as, back in the early 1970s, I was as well.
The chapter continues: A good result of our study would be either a recognition of how the Classical paradigm can finally solve our problems or of why it can’t and how an altered new paradigm might be able to. How then should we proceed with our critical study? In what order should we approach the body of Classical Marxist Leninist thought? What should we emphasize and what should we only gloss over?
To answer requires a better understanding of the internal relations of any revolutionary paradigm’s three component parts: theory, strategy, and practice. Such an understanding will tell us how to study each part with an eye toward most readily discovering from where the whole’s weaknesses derive.
So, first, what are theories, how are they constructed and used, what are the loci of their strengths and weaknesses, and how might they be studied most effectively, especially when one is looking to assess and perhaps overthrow them and their whole parent paradigm?
Theories are collections of ideas that people use to understand the realities they encounter. Theories have one part which describes the elements of reality and another part which talks about how those elements interact, where the later allows predictions concerning what the elements will do in varying situations. Leave out or get an important element wrong, and you will miss its effects which might be crucial.
Social theories refer to realities of people and institutions, but are necessarily abstract: they do not focus on everything in their reference systems but only on those parts considered important. Thus ‘what is important’ and included in discussion, and ‘what is unimportant’ and abstracted out, become crucial questions in social theorizing.
As Paul Sweezy—who was, I interject, a central figure of the Marxist Monthly Review Press back then—wrote:
“The legitimate purpose of abstraction in social science is never to get away from the real world but rather to isolate certain aspects of the real world for intensive investigation. When, therefore, we say that we are operating at a high level of abstraction we mean that we are dealing with a relatively small number of aspects of reality; we emphatically do not mean that those aspects with which we are dealing are not capable of historical investigation and factual illustration.”
Thus we have our first guideline for theory construction: for clarity, conciseness, and useability one must abstract out all that is unimportant; but for correctness and wholeness one must include all that is important. One must abstract away the unessential while making sure not to eliminate from consideration anything essential.
This raises a problem. How does one determine what is essential before having a theory which explains the whole? The wise way around this problem is caution and a flexible willingness to reformulate one’s views over and over as one’s insights grow more and more complete. The subjective and obviously flawed way around the problem is to determine what is important on the basis of self-interested speculations, and to then bend everything to suit that first determination rather than vice versa.
For example: a factory owner runs his enterprise according to a certain social economic theory of business. The business produces well, profits continually rise, his business life goes according to plan, and he is reasonably content with the whole situation. He barely notices his factory’s effects on his employees’ lives, or on their families, or on the ecology, or on its consumers. His theory obscures all that, effectively removing it all from his awareness [except to the extent any of it threatens his profits]. As a result others bear the costs of his profit-taking while he goes unaware of all that occurs outside the abstractions of his business-school theories of life.
Then his workers strike and he alters his views somewhat by including references to salaries in his calculations. Not the effect on his workers but only on his profits and his ability to keep collecting them. Then consumers protest and ecologists clamor and again he adapts his theories precisely to the extent to which effects on his profit and power gain his attention.
The lesson of our capitalist’s behavior is relatively clear. Social theories are often rooted in self-interested desires. Beyond that they are often blind but nonetheless their users typically convince themselves their theories are not narrow but complete. They get away with this self-interested self-deception precisely because their theory’s narrowness obligingly hides from view, in a sense behind its own absent elements.
Narrow theories often nonetheless seem complete because they are logically sound regarding the elements they include, and force their practitioners to overlook what they don’t include by steering their attentions away from the ensuing flawed results. Narrow theories appear good to their believers because they are perceived through self-created blinders especially adapted to block out all that is flawed.
All of this can apply to leftists as well as to capitalists. When revolutionists use a narrow theory they too can be expected to create partially counter-productive programs that ignore certain relevant aspects of the total spectrum of effects of their implementation. Narrow-minded revolutionists function [in that respect] very similarly to narrow-minded capitalists. They too blunder on in their mistakes, blind to the realities around them, precisely because their theories so constrain their perceptions.
I have to interject: reading this, I suspect I had lurking in my mind even back then what would shortly later become and remain a central focus of mine, that the classical ideology included distorted class concepts that ignored and obscured the existence of a third class between labor and capital…or perhaps I stumbled onto that recognition later because of a prior awareness of the kinds of flaw an ideology might have.
Either way, the chapter from What Is To Be Undone continued: Theories can therefore be weak in at least two different ways. First, they can have inaccurate or incomplete descriptions of important realities. They include some but not all important elements. Second, they can have incorrect understandings of the ways important realities interact. They see some but not all implications of choices they confront.
Thus social theory must correspond to social reality as closely as possible and all its lacks of correspondence must be well understood by its practitioners. Its positive assertions and its abstractions must be equally justified. To construct a social theory we should try to organize our efforts in light of these insights. In criticizing a theory we can profitably do the same.
We will set out descriptions of Classical Marxism Leninism’s views of social reality and of social interactions. We will examine the relations between its theory and its practitioners, and we will take into account the accuracy and justification for its abstractions of all types.
But just understanding, even in rather deep complexity, is never quite enough; one wants also to affect. Marxist Leninists with goals and general theoretic understandings form more or less detailed plans of action or strategy. To have a full plan for analyzing the Marxist Leninist paradigm we must also know how we should approach its strategic aspects.
Strategies guide us toward desired goals. How well do they derive from theory, do they get us where we wish to go, and do they minimize ‘expenses’ and side complications? These are criteria for judging strategies and they are certainly easy enough to apply, at least if one is an objective and well informed evaluator rather than a biased or ill-informed participant in a specific set of events.
The communist, for example, feels that the capitalist’s approach to transportation problems is idiotic precisely because it creates even larger problems for working people than those it was ostensibly aiming to solve. The communist thinks that capitalist strategy is poor and would at least in some cases explain it by saying that capitalist theory is self-interestedly narrow.
On the other side of the coin, the capitalist says that communist strategy is ridiculous because even if it does solve a few social inadequacies it does so at too great a cost in never-to-be-regained lost human freedoms, but he means lost profits. Here too the smart capitalist would probably find the roots of the purported problem in self-interestedly narrow authoritarian theory rather than in the incompetence of the theory’s practitioners.
Strategies move from vagueness to preciseness as their practitioners learn ever more about the properties of systems on which they are working, goals they are seeking, and tools they are using. Strategy emerges from theory. The more comprehensive the theory, the more potentially precise the strategy. The more incomplete the theory, the more vague the strategy and greater the need for constant enhancement.
So analyzing strategies is essentially a problem of seeing whether they really do fit the environs they are applied to and aim consistently at the goals they are supposedly seeking. The problem exists in translating an understanding of a theory’s strengths and weaknesses to the level of its compatible and thus similarly powerful or afflicted strategy.
What about tactics and practice? Practice is a favorite word of leftists, usually used in reference to the activities of people trying to change their environments and in turn being changed by those environments. Tactics, another often used word, are well defined ways of practicing that occur over and over whenever roughly the same conditions arise. So there are military tactics, race car driving tactics, medical tactics, business tactics, production line tactics, literary tactics, and revolutionary tactics. Most practice is simply the application of variations of available tactics in concrete situations.
Tactics are chosen because of the ways they fulfill strategic dictates. When there is no strategy, tactics become guesswork and practice becomes problematic and thus ineffectual. Strategy affects tactics and vice versa. Strategy allows a rational choice of tactics, and knowledge of available tactics allows formulation of the most economical strategies.
Consider two military strategists. Confronted with obstacles and a goal, an effective strategist knows available tactics and has a theory for understanding the whole situation and the varying effects that different chosen acts would have upon it. The ineffective one does not.
The effective one forms a strategy based on a complete understanding of all important factors and begins implementing it and thus moving toward likely success. The ineffective one perhaps forms a plan that depends on tactics that aren’t even available options, or whose effects are misunderstood, or perhaps forms no plan at all, merely blundering ahead in redundancy and error.
Good strategy uses whatever is available to accomplish as much as possible. Knowledge of tactical options and their likely outcomes provides a foundation for creating powerful strategy and good strategy in turn provides general criteria for deciding what tactics to actually use in what sequences.
But even when a practitioner has highly accurate theory, good knowledge of tactics, and good strategic sense, things are unlikely to occur exactly as planned, if not because of error, then certainly because real practice often leads to unforeseen developments which then demand changes in theory or strategy.
The militarist comes up against an unforeseen situation in the field and alters strategy, or someone discovers new forms of weaponry and that leads to an enrichment of military theory. Or similarly for the doctor, revolutionist, or whoever.
In general, social theories are incomplete and depend on descriptions of very complicated ‘objects’. They must constantly adapt to accord with new experiences and insights discovered through on-going normal practice. Only then can they approach correctness and provide a basis for ever enriched strategy.
In summary, strategy provides criteria for choosing tactics. Practice is the means for implementing and correcting theory and strategy. Theory provides the framework within which strategy and tactics function, a means for anticipating their various possible effects, and a means for understanding what goals are realistic for any whole situation.
Revolutionaries are usually concerned with changing the whole natures of their societies. In their work they want the smallest possible margin for error, and especially for the repetition of error. They thus require that the flow from theory to strategy to practice and back include effective corrective mechanisms.
Ideally the revolutionist functions with a good social theory and a broad flexible strategy for change. He or she develops a full understanding of as many tactics as possible, (strikes, boycotts, parliamentary electoral tactics, ways of organizing and communicating, civil disobedience, marches, sabotage, styles of behavior and living, etc.) and of the ways their use affects various relevant situations, and then engages in self-conscious practice. Ideally the revolutionist learns more and more about tactics while constantly refining strategy and theory to make them more accurate and richer in content.
So, good revolutionary theory, strategy, and practice, or good revolutionary ideology and practice is a totality which is always incomplete but constantly going forward, each aspect providing the criteria for the worth and growth of the others.
Theory provides world view. Long term strategy provides guidelines for activity. In conjunction with a goal—what we seek—theory and strategy together compose a revolutionary paradigm which guides revolutionary thought, analysis, planning, and action.
To minimize errors and dogmatism such consciousness must be self-correcting and growth-oriented. It must not stagnate. It must alter to fit changing realities rather than to merely rationalize changing realities in order to preserve itself. It must be rational verifiable rather than irrational ‘religious’.
Though a revolutionary ideology may have weaknesses, it should eliminate them over time. Indeed, good revolutionary consciousness should have a tendency toward continual re-alteration built right into its methods and especially into its strategy and associated practice.
So, what have we? Classical Marxism is a revolutionary social theory and Classical Marxism Leninism is a revolutionary ideology. Virtually all Marxist Leninist organizations I have had contact with [back then, as of 1974, and also now, still] operate as if they believe their social theory and strategy immutable, and indeed seem to get their identities and authority from that avowed permanence.
This constitutes a dismal state of affairs, because of the stagnation involved, and still more so if the theory and strategy are actually flawed. Our purpose is to formulate Classical Marxism Leninism in as clear a manner as we can so that we might discover what parts of it are useful, what parts are not, and in what ways it might be enriched or altered. To the same ends we shall also talk about Maoism and Anarchism.
Since we already know [back then from our Sixties experiences] that [then] present consciousness needs and correlated immediate revolutionary crises revolve in part around getting new methodologies as well as new, very organic, useable understandings of racism, sexism, authority, consciousness, and motivation in general, we organize our expositions of Classical Marxism Leninism, Anarchism, and Maoism in accord.
We go step by step examining those aspects that reflect most on our particular needs, to eventually build edifices in which the origin of the strengths and weaknesses with regard to our needs are clearly evident.
Finally, as an answer to our need for a ‘plan of approach’ we will first present Classical Marxist Leninist theory and Leninist strategy, and then criticize practice, strategy, and theory in sequence, with a final summary for clarification.
In the end we hope to have some agreement about the worth of the Classical Marxist Leninist paradigm. Then after discussion of the Anarchist and Maoist alternatives we hope to have some agreement about where to jump off in either advocating an existing paradigm or constructing something new that could more effectively guide future revolutionary practice. I felt in the mid seventies that it was necessary for us to move energetically but also competently. I still feel that way. As Fidel Castro put it:
“The duty of every revolutionary is to make the revolution. It is known that the revolution will triumph in America and throughout the world, but it is not for revolutionaries to sit in the doorways of their houses waiting for the corpses of imperialism to pass by. The role of Job doesn’t suit a revolutionary. Each year that the liberation of America is speeded up will mean the lives of millions of children saved, millions of intelligences saved for culture, an infinite quantity of pain spared the people.”
That was how I ended that chapter of What Is To Be Undone.
And so, where are we at in a sequence of articles about ideology that we have begun so as to address the questions: Is current left ideology fine or flawed? Does it need continued allegiance, overhaul, or replacement?
Back in the early seventies What Is To Be Undone looked at the recent practice of the new left and found lots of problems. The question arose, did we need to merely do a better job understanding and applying Marxist Leninist or Anarchist or Maoist insights while we avoided temptation or coercion that might divert us from that already available and worthy choice? Were our heads already on right? Did we, in other words, just need to do normal revolutionary pursuits better?
Or did we need to look closely at our then existent ideologies to reveal their flaws, and revolutionize our thoughts to find new ideology? Did we need to persist with ideas from dead men’s minds firmly cemented into our own heads? Or did we need to consult our own experiences and revamp our theory, strategy, and tactics to reorient our heads?
Similarly, not then but now, do we need to turn back to classical Marxism Leninism or other old options, or do we need to develop new ideology? I hope that question is meaningful for all who read this. I hope whichever way you lean, you will want to help the work of thinking through the options.
Albert Interviewed About His Latest Book: The Wind Cries Freedom
Michael Albert is interviewed here about his latest book, The Wind Cries Freedom, a fictional oral history set in the future.
Bridget: What’s in your new book?
Michael: The Wind Cries Freedom reports on a future movement that works to win a new world. The book’s imagined future interviewer, Miguel Guevara elicits tales of the interviewees’ participation in the next American Revolution. Why did they join? What did they do? What did they feel? What did they learn?
Why does the book end when the movement wins the Presidency? Is the book ultimately about electoral politics? Is that the revolution? Is that the guiding theme and goal?
No. The book’s last chapter only marked the movement having attained state power. By that point the movement had also won massive gains throughout dwellings, neighborhoods, and institutions all over the country. The book’s closing electoral victory didn’t end the revolution much less define it, it only opened a new stage of future struggle.
The future movement for a revolutionary participatory society, or RPS, first fought against old institutions. The oral history covers that. Then the project entered a new stage that would focuss overwhelmingly on building the new future, not fighting the old. Who knows, perhaps down the road some new future actors, channelled by me or whoever, will relay to us in our time the lessons of the later transitional stage of their struggle.
How tricky is keeping the timeline in mind?
For me, yes, honestly, it has been, particularly stepping back and talking about it because my mindset has been to channel Miguel and the participants the participants, not imagine them, but I hope it won’t be a problem for readers. In any case, what matters is can the lessons help us?
Alright, but why did you choose a novel, and for that matter, why now?
Unhinged, despicable fascists now seek horrific change and they must be stopped. But even when we wipe the fascists away, we will still need to replace the social structures that brought them into being. So I channeled a future oral history because we not only need to block efforts of fascists or oligarchs or whatever you wish to call them to make things horrendously worse, we also need to undertake and carry to conclusion revolutionary efforts to make things vastly better than they have ever been. Even more, the way we do the former needs to aid how we do the later.
Okay, but why an oral history? Why a novel?
I always try to convey insights and inspiration that can bear upon accomplishing immediate but also beyond that, massive fundamental change. To my way of thinking, that is the primary task of writing in our time. Aid now and aid future. But you also ask, I think, why suddenly choose fiction when you have no fiction writing experience.
It is a good question and it vexed me. Many people, including myself, write about overcoming various obstacles including not just fascism, but current perverted democracy, rapacious economy, capitalist hypocrisy, vile misogyny, hateful racism, and murderous imperialism, all topped off by suicidal ecological insanity. And many people, including myself, point to the political power of the state, the dominance of corporate centers of economic power, the pervasiveness of patriarchal norms and habits, the tenacity of racial hierarchy, as well as defenders of the existing order who repress and subvert whatever threatens their dominance.
On the other hand, not so many people write remotely as much about obstacles that we have within us that also impede our efforts. About obstacles embedded in the diverse forms of personal baggage we all carry in our personalities and habits due to living within the insane embrace of patriarchal families, schools that channel passivity, work that stifles efficacy, and a world that demands obedience, and due to the effects of all that imposed baggage on the horizons of our thoughts and aspirations.
So? Why is that relevant to the choice to employ fiction?
Well, I wanted to have people like us and like those all around us relay their experiences of becoming radical and then revolutionary. What inspired them? What did they personally feel? What did they then do? How did it unfold? And most of all what lessons did they learn that might help our own efforts in our own times? I wanted effective future revolutionaries to personally communicate with us.
But second, you asked why now? Well, why not now is one answer. Every delay in attaining a new world is more lives lost and tarnished by this world. But another answer is because, if not now, when? Each delay tends to strengthen the thought that there is no better future. Delay provokes more delay. And a third answer is, if not now, then fascist trends will likely make the task far more difficult in the future. Indeed fascism’s essential purpose all around the world is to restructure relations so that dissent and resistance much less positive fundamental change are put off forever.
Well, then, what do you think are the main obstacles to winning? You have often written about vision, what to fight for, but in this book while that is present, there is a whole lot more about what to fight against and especially how to fight effectively. So what are the main obstacles to overcome?
That is the big question. Which is why The Wind Cries Freedom is so damn long. But in a nutshell, to my eyes, what I actually think may be the biggest obstacle to our winning is not the power of the state, or the mesmerizing capacity of media, but our own doubts and harmful habits which impede hope and vision and instead impose cynicism and fear.
And that is why The Wind Cries Freedom not only addresses the technical and social possibility of a vastly better world, and not only addresses strategic and organizational ways to proceed, but also addresses interpersonal debates and differences, and personal fears, feelings, and finally personal hurdles, motivations, aspirations, and inspirations.
Guevara’s interviewees want to make real the possibility, likelihood, and even inevitability of winning if we can transcend our own histories. That is the belief that fueled the choice of an oral history, albeit fictional, instead of yet another less personal and solely analytical account.
What do you hope the book accomplishes? What do you worry might instead occur?
My hope is that The Wind Cries Freedom doesn’t become a kind of academic prop much less some kind of operating manual, but, instead that it becomes a positive pole, a sort of chime of freedom that helps open options and inspire choices, and that if it doesn’t itself do all that, then that it at least provokes discovery by others of critical insights that can do all that.
My fear for it, instead, is that it is effectively born dead, not because its substance or the sentiments of its actors are shown insufficient or misleading, but because it doesn’t reach its audience. It simply isn’t read and assessed. Many friends have told me that the idea of future revolutionaries telling their experiences is great. How can people now, they reason, who face Trump, who see the urgent need for fundamental change away from what gave us Trump, but who doubt that such change is even possible, or can be win, not hope that such a book will ease or even erase those doubts? So they tell me that the time is right for the book, the style is right for the task, and so surely people will give it a try. It will resonate and generate discussion, debate, and desire.
I hope the people telling me that are right. But the power of long-nurtured cynicism can’t be ignored. The power of hopelessness. The power of a sentiment like “been there, done that, so no thanks,” is real. Indeed, I think cynicism, hopelessness, and impatience are examples of the baggage-based obstacles I mentioned earlier. This book is meant to address how to overcome those factors that exist in our own activism. But that suggests a weird kind of complication. Does one have to have read the book, or something similar, to want to read the book? I hope not. I hope instead that it will be enough to have witnessed Trump and actors like him elsewhere and to have endured what led to him; that it will be enough to have witnessed or been part of MAGA or MAGA’s international variants and felt their impact and shortcomings as a response to the horrors of business as usual; that it will be enough to have fought against ICE and other anti immigrant projects around the world and against war; and to have known injustice in its many various forms to motivate enough desire for shared vision, shared strategy, shared methods, and shared mutual respect for people to give this oral history a chance. I guess we will see.
And for those not yet ready to give it a look, there is a book page with description, early testimonials, the table of contents, even a playlist to go with the book, and more, to consult before deciding to read it or not.
You can see Michael’s book page and buy The Wind Cries Freedom from here.
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