The post-Covid generation’s two available paths are arrested development, or entry into a life of overwork just to hold on to a bare minimum. When those in Gen Z become inert, and fall behind in the basic areas of life, they’re doing so because the alternative is to fully invest oneself in a broken system. Home ownership and access to well-paying jobs have been cut off from this generation regardless of how individually driven they are; and when a “normal” life is out of reach anyhow, many will decide it makes sense to give up, whether consciously or subconsciously.
This is the condition that’s afflicting the bulk of people born after 2000, and in the realm of radical politics, it’s having ramifications for how the typical “activist” orgs are able to operate. Petty-bourgeois radicalism, where leftists limit their outreach to a small bubble, has always leaned onto the student element for new recruits. Petty-bourgeois radical orgs like PSL depend on a model of routinely picking up kids, intensely working them for a time, and then taking in a new batch of kids after the old batch has become burnt out. This is how these orgs have been operating for decades. Post-Covid, though, when the proportion of unemployed college graduates has reached historic highs and most in Gen Z aren’t on track to start families, the experience of these younger people has grown too detached from what such opportunistic projects are selling.
Petty-bourgeois radicalism is a boomer ideology, based in the idealist notion that if you just protest hard enough, the revolution will come. This is a view that can’t be reconciled with the bleak reality we’ve been thrust into, where no matter how hard you try, you will end up far too short. This helps explain why PSL’s “pan-leftist” model has lost its former relevance, and been replaced by another breed of ultra-leftism; one that’s aggressively adventuristic, and focused on illegal action for its own sake.
This ideology of course isn’t capable of winning the bulk of the masses either, and it’s only capable of rallying those among Gen Z who are “woke” to the effect that they actively isolate themselves from the people. The majority of Gen Z have no reason to join with it. For communists to build a new workers movement, we will need to put forth a very different kind of militant practice than what’s offered by the “antifa” circles. We’ll have to embody the lifestyle of mental and physical excellence that was described by Mao, and that can save Gen Z from its stagnation. Wrote Mao:
If the body is made savage, then the civilized mind will follow. Knowledge consists in knowing the things in the world, and in discerning their laws. In this matter we must rely on our body, because direct observation depends on the ears and eyes, and reflection depends on the brain. The ears and eyes, as well as the brain, may be considered parts of the body. When the body is perfect, then knowledge is also perfect. Hence one can say that knowledge is acquired indirectly through physical education. Physical strength is required to undertake the study of the numerous modern sciences, whether in school or through independent study. He who is equal to this is the man with a strong body; he who is not equal to it is the man with a weak body. The division between the strong and the weak determines the area of responsibilities each can assume.
Physical education not only enhances knowledge. it also harmonizes the sentiments. The power of the sentiments is extremely great. The ancients endeavoured to discipline them with reason. Hence they asked. 'Is the master [i.e.. reason] always alert?' They also said: 'One should discipline the heart with reason.' But reason proceeds from the heart. and the heart resides in the body. We often observe that the weak are enslaved by their sentiments and are incapable of mastering them. Those whose senses are imperfect or whose limbs are defective are often enslaved by excessive passion, and reason is incapable of saving them. Hence it may be called an invariable law that when the body is perfect and healthy, the sentiments are also correct.
The system doesn’t want our bodies or minds to be healthy. It wants us to respond to our bleak circumstances by languishing, and using electronic or chemical stimulation as a replacement for the lives we were supposed to have. Many have fallen into these habits, and many will continue to stick with these habits even if they want to escape them. Individual self-betterment advice is not enough; we won’t be able to fully defeat these self-destructive phenomena until the superstructure behind them has been abolished. What we can do is build a structure that stands in opposition to the illnesses that capital imposes on us, and provides a means for our society’s “left-behinds” to do labor on the revolution’s behalf.
The key is to make this labor genuinely mean something, and make it have the greatest constructive effect that such work can bring. The pan-leftist orgs give the maximum amount of work to passionate college kids, and when this work inevitably fails to bring real progress in the class war, these kids respond by becoming alienated from that labor. This work fails to be fulfilling because those in charge do not have any serious endgame; their practice is “movementist” rather than revolutionary, as its only endgame is to maintain the existing cycle of performative activities. The same dynamic of pointless work and burnout applies to the “antifa” groups, though they have the advantage of offering their members maximum libidinal release through unrestrained adventurism. No matter how much catharsis the “antifa” warriors get during their time in these circles, they too will keep cycling in and out. By its nature, the compatible left cannot offer its recruits work that fulfills them in a sustainable way, and that lets them achieve things which build upon each other over time.
Only the authentic communist movement, the movement that’s serious about analyzing the class struggle’s history and testing political practices, is capable of giving the “left behinds” what they need. If you’re among the “left behinds”—as in you’ve had enough doors closed on you to understand the system views you as excess—then you’re not really who the ultra-left groups are trying to appeal to. They’re looking for people who haven’t yet been sufficiently “black-pilled,” and therefore are willing to believe that it’s worthwhile to pursue the failed practices of the New Left. It’s when you’ve been able to experience these failures that it becomes apparent why we must take a different path.
This alternative path will have to be one where we synthesize Mao Zedong Thought’s ideas about revolutionary discipline, with an organization-building model that fits our conditions. The work we do will need to change as the circumstances evolve, but it’s already certain that this org model will include a combination of above-ground and below-ground projects; as in mass work which gives us a popular base, along with “secret work” which gives security to those whose lives and freedom are threatened by the state.
The accelerating crackdown by militarized police, and by the ICE forces that function as a paramilitary force, is making people aware of just how urgent our situation has become. We must prevent the ultra-lefts from hijacking the resistance against this state violence, and build those dual-power structures that can let popular power keep growing. And to carry forth this task, we will have to take example from Mao’s party during its own era of tribulation, training our ranks in how to maximize their power as human beings.
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