Suffering Will Not Lead To Salvation

Far too many people have convinced themselves that in order to build the world we need to thrive, some people will have to be sacrificed along the way

Jul 24, 2024

With the recent departure of Joe Biden from the US Presidential race and the coalescing consensus around Kamala Harris before the Democratic Convention in Chicago we’ve seen something that’s been absent from a lot of people since the Presidential campaign started, some hope. The burst of enthusiasm around Kamala’s forthcoming nomination has genuinely energized the Democratic Party stalwarts along with those who are more ambivalent but would like to make sure Trump doesn’t return to power.1 Amid this renewal we’ve also seen a slight panic among Republicans and other radical reactionaries who were expecting to ride concern about Biden’s age into a trifecta which would usher in a Trump-Vance administration which would fulfill their wildest dreams demonstrated by those Republican convention goers waving signs reading “Mass Deportation” during what they thought was almost a coronation at the Republican National Convention.2

In the wake of these development we’ve also seen a reaction that would best be described as ambivalence if not outright outrage at the idea that anyone should be happy about the revived hope of blocking Trump from office. People to the left of the Democratic Party if not on it’s left flank see assumed naïveté from everyone else as they celebrate the seeming success of the Democratic Party functioning with all too rare competence. Now, to be sure, there is an apparent triumphalism being signaled from the usual “Vote Blue, No Matter Who” crowd. This, I think, is being conflated to include everyone who would like to see something like a popular front being formed to block the deeper entrenchment of fascism in the body politic. It is concerning to me that people committed to organizing people for the greater good also assumes that the very people they are supposed to be committed to serving are too dim to think strategically or they are simply buying whatever is sold to them. This contempt for the intelligence of regular people has been one of the greater grating and annoying tics from those who were adamant that they could simply spin past Biden’s obvious problems with the electorate concerning his age.

Aside from and maybe a part of this crowd though are people who genuinely believe that the path towards a more leftist politics runs through things getting miserable enough that people will suddenly be open to hearing, learning, and supporting a politics through which everyone can thrive, “the only way out is through” as their ethos.3 This ideology has spread so there are also accelerationists on the right like Elon Musk and other tech funders following in the thinking of left accelerationists who genuinely believe in and are committed to finding the path towards socialism through the continued degradation of material circumstances until their politics are seen as the only viable path forward. This stance is appealing to some people for a number of reasons. Historic examples like The Great Depression leading to the New Deal is prominent within these narratives as is the formation of the USSR in the aftermath of World War I. These examples are compelling to some due to nostalgia but also because they flatten out the actual work done by organizers, politicians, and revolutionaries to bring about the changes that are now accepted within the political mainstream or created a new state.4 Also, in line with these narratives being nostalgic they also reflect a state of circumstances and tactics which do not apply to our current moment. In these amber colored reflections we lose the nuance which saw Black people left out of many of the programs and benefits enacted with the New Deal. We can overlook the waves of recriminations and state violence aimed at comrades who were soon found to be out of step with the new consensus within the state.

Additionally, these examples from the far past are necessary because within our current context we’ve seen this theory tested repeatedly within the very near past. Just within the US context we have a myriad number of examples. The disaster of the Iraq War did lead to the election of Barack Obama but it did not discredit the national security blob that even Obama’s team evoked as a powerful and problematic force within Washington D.C..5 Instead we saw the Afghanistan War dragged on into quagmire after it was tagged as the “good war” with Biden spending a lot of his political capital even after it long became unpopular with the general public but maintained it’s credibility with policy makers, elite media, and the national security state.6

For another example the Great Recession visited pain upon many poor, and middle class people throughout the country. In the wake of this we saw many people turn left through movements like Occupy, and later the Sanders campaign.7 Still, we then saw a countermovement from the center through the nomination of Secretary Clinton by the Democratic Party, and by the right in the person of Donald Trump who gained power and the bulk of the Overton Window in the wake of the very real and personal pain people felt after the housing market crashed.

Following this we saw a pandemic which upended the global economy during the Trump Administration. This should have been the perfect moment for the “pain leads to glory” model purported by left accelerationists. Here we had a reactionary President plucked from the world of real estate and entertainment openly pushing a eugenic policy in the service of capital as thousands and thousands of people were dying in viscerally horrific ways in the heart of the US.8 In the wake of this if acceleration was the viable path we should have seen a turn left as, once again, the Sanders campaign was even more prominent and accepted and there with a ready made answer for the concerns of the people who are suddenly made aware of their precarity within the status quo. What happened though was the election of Joe Biden who also worked to enact a policy which sent people back to work and get back to normal as Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema blocked the social funding of the “American Families Plan” which would have seen the extension of the benefits people experienced during the response to COVID.9

If we move from the US context to look abroad we see a repeat of this pattern. In the United Kingdom we’ve seen the right move with a free hand from the moment of the Brexit vote. As the Tories were able to run the state we’ve seen the disastrous execution of Brexit along with the predicted pain of people being cut off from the European common market in lost jobs, higher tariffs on goods, and even people in the middle class experiencing the friction of having their free movement restricted.10 We’ve also seen the targeted pain of the Tory party upon the English people, these austerity politics have even lead to people in the country literally shrinking. Did these resulting experiences lead to an ascendant left? No, we saw Corbyn sidelined and a Labour Party which has adopted many of the conservative stances of the Tory party adopted on a broad basis as common sense reforms.11

The fact of the matter is that history is contingent. Things happen because people have created the institutions, organized the people, and were ready within the correct historic moment, and able to out maneuver and out last reactionary forces. In each of these examples we’ve seen the way that left organizing has been met with and in a lot of ways beat back by organizing from the right and centrist factions. They too have agency and will work to enact their vision during moments of disjuncture. Far too many people on the left have substituted an almost mechanical view of the way things “must go” rather than working to create the necessary conditions for enacting real change. Rather than root for the immiseration of others as a shining path to real change we must grapple with the material losses, reactionary policy which must be wound back and wound down in order to see a world in which everyone can thrive. Do not root for chaos, instead look to create a firm ground upon which we can build higher. Moving forward I would like to discuss this in the context of the current movements in the Global South but I fear I’ve gone long enough here.

Suffering Will Not Lead To Salvation

Far too many people have convinced themselves that in order to build the world we need to thrive, some people will have to be sacrificed along the way

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