We Need Comrades
For too long, the individualist rhetoric of “self-care” has crowded out our sense of working collectively for shared goals. Comradeship is about our responsibility to each other — a responsibility that makes us better and stronger than we could ever be alone.
Supporters of the textile workers’ strike outside a US Army recruitment booth in Washington Square, New York, United States, September 1934.FPG / Hulton Archive / Getty
We’re constantly being told that our problems can be solved by imagination, big ideas, and creativity. It seems that creative new ideas will not only solve the climate crisis but eliminate extreme inequality and even triumph over race hate. Weirdly, this appeal to “think big” and be “imaginative” unites everyone from tech giants to socialist activists, mainstream politicians, and “luxury communists.”
This apparent unity prevents us from seeing how severe the underlying conflicts over capitalism, borders, migration, and resources really are. Division recedes from view, hidden by the fantasy that there could be some idea big enough, creative enough, and imaginative enough to solve all our problems — seemingly instantaneously.
Such is the illusion driving the appeal to imagination. But the reality is that we face fundamental conflicts over the future of our societies and our world. Social change isn’t painless. We need to accept the reality of division, know whose side we are on, and fight to strengthen that side. We don’t need to convince everyone. Rather, we need to convince enough people to carry out the struggle and win.
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