“A lot of it was just sheer grinding shitwork. You think making a revolution is all agony and ecstasy? It’s not, it’s mostly drudgery. Hard, disciplined, repetitive work that’s boring and necessary. But what keeps you going is that twenty times a week something would happen—out there, in that lousy capitalist world, or inside, among your comrades—and you’d remember. You’d remember why you were here, and what you were doing it all for, and it was like a shot of adrenalin coursing through your veins. The world was all around you all the time. That was the tremendous thing about those times. The sense of history that you lived with daily. The sense of remaking the world. Every time I wrote a leaflet, or marched on a picket line, or went to a meeting, I was remaking the world.” (Vivian Gornick, The Romance of American Communism)
One of the greatest things about socialist organizing is the way it serves as a hedge against despair.
This may seem to be a curious claim. Socialism has never had a more uphill battle than it does in America, a country that was soaked with the stains of racism, imperialism, individualism, and capitalism from the moment of its birth. Our two-party system practically guarantees all-or-nothing elections where no divergent ideas can ever find purchase. and our social isolation, ultra-financialized market, and lack of a genuine worker’s party make all the work that we do very difficult. All of us — from members even older than I am to fresh kids still in school — have a sense that they are fighting for a result they will never live to see.
But that is where the hedge springs up, in that very ground of frustration. We all have this common experience, and its commonality brings us together. We have lived through one Trump administration, and we did not die; we fought from the very beginning. Whatever we did or didn’t accomplish, we know we were there: bringing in lawyers to fight him on deportation, chaining ourselves to the doors of eviction courts to keep people from being thrown out of their homes, electing local leaders who would bring an end to cash bail or sign on to some form of rent control. Whatever we have won and lost, we have done it together.
It has never been easy, and it never will be easy. We have seen our comrades beaten, gassed, and jailed. We have seen ourselves forsake good-paying jobs by choosing to fight the good fight instead. We have been mocked and belittled in person and online by the conservatives who hate us, the liberals who condescend to us, and the ultra-radicals who vilify us. We have experienced death: our comrades overseas who are victims of white terrors, and our colleagues at home who succumb to desperation and depression. No one got into this for the good times.
But the good times have been so, so good. The victories we have won, however small, have meant the world to us – and to the people for whom we were fighting, whether it was ourselves or other members of the working class. Walking picket lines for strikes that were ultimately successful, attending boring meetings that yielded some valuable insight or an organizing victory, showing up to help other coalition organizations accomplish a goal, and, for me, most of all, making new socialists — sometimes of people who seemed the least likely to embrace socialism — is a feeling that is impossible to describe, it brings so much joy and strength.
I have also cultivated friendships among my comrades that I know will last for decades, for a lifetime. I have gone to parties that have been unforgettable; I have met people who have become incredibly close to me that I would never have met otherwise; and I have been to the weddings of so many of my wonderful, beautiful fellow DSA members. I have counted on them, and they on me, in ways that yielded results I would never have expected from my own family. Some of them, hopefully, will read this, and I hope they know that I love them in a way that only comrades can ever truly love one another, forged in the heat not just of closeness but of sameness of purpose, in the true fire of solidarity.
Learning what solidarity really means has been an incredibly liberating experience for me. So has working alongside comrades who come from other countries, other ethnic groups, other classes, other races, other gender identifications, other sexualities, other cultures, and other perspectives than mine, and learning from them things that I likely would never have understood without their kind and patient teaching.
Socialist organizing has been of inestimable value just in my ability to cope with the hardships of forever being exposed to the sharp edges of capitalism, of the constant low-grade stress that plagues you when you live in the throbbing, oozing heart of an empire of cruelty. It has made me understand how and why things really work, rather than the pretty lies and egotistic excuses the system encourages. It has made me fear everything less because I know my comrades have my back.
It has given me a confidence and a sureness that I never experienced anywhere else except in the arms of my loving wife, who, happily for me, is also a socialist. It has kept me from mistaking the internet for the real world, and from the grinding sense of madness that comes from not knowing that’s a mistake. It has given me places to go and things to do that make me aware of how big the world is and how much there is still to do to make it a just, decent world for everyone — not just the people who look and sound like me.
Having friends — having comrades — who understand what we’re up against, who see how hard it is to be hated by reactionaries and patronized by liberals, who see through the bullshit and have a real, material political analysis instead of just an endless skittering vibe has kept me sane. Receiving political education has been transformative, and giving it has been beyond rewarding. Studying the history of socialism, the theory of Marxism, and the way both of them understand and inform history has made me more certain than ever that we are right — and that we will keep being right no matter how much we are scorned when we lose and forgotten when we win.
Most of all, it has placed me at the vanguard, not only of our local socialist organization, but of human beings living in an increasingly degraded and impossible socio-economic reality who do more than talk, do more than vote, and do more than accept the limits of the choices we are offered by a system we despise. It has taught me that there are no ‘realities’ that were not created by humans, and there are no ‘rules’ that we cannot undo. This world was made by mankind and it can be remade, by a united working class that alone can bring the wheels of capital to a halt, as we have done before and can do again. It has been the way out, and will continue to be the only way out, of accepting the lie that we have no choice but bad and worse, no future but barbarism abroad or barbarism everywhere, and no hope than bigger or smaller crumbs. Being active as a socialist has been the single greatest refutation of the pessimism of the intellect and refusal of the will that tells us it is this and no other.
And the best thing about it is that it is not a closed door. It depends on no secret knowledge. And it is not a single narrative with a predetermined direction. It is something you can join, something you can participate in freely and openly, and something you can shape into whatever you feel it should be. I did. I hope you do too.