The Sadness of the Left
Many years ago I was in conversation with a bookseller in Saskatoon who had had a very lengthy history of activism in the USA. I was in "recruiting mode" selling the soap of anarchism, and his reply was basically even though he agreed with what I said he saw little point in putting out any effort because, "there isn't any movement anymore". He was right even at the time he spoke-the late 70s.
There is a "continental difference" between leftism today and what it was in the late 60s/early 70s. At that time the general "aura" was one of "hope". To a large extent this can be put down to better economic times, to the entry of working class youth into higher education and to more than a little dose of naivety. In terms of the later you have to search far and wide to find apologists for communist dictatorship amongst today's left. Even those who have no moral compunction whatsoever about mass murder such as the "reformed communists" or even some Maoist sects have learned the virtues of monastic silence. The avenging angel of the lord of public opinion will pass over them if they simply shut their mouths.
But "hope" and "despair" are the primary differences between the left that existed then and what exists now. At the time of the late 60s/early 70s there was a VERY widely accepted delusion that revolution was both possible and imminent. Of course it never was, and even the closest approaches such as France 1968 founded on the gulf between desire/hope and intelligent thought. The result was indeed a "revolution", but like all revolutions before it it benefited those who had NOT made the revolutions. In this case it was the social controllers, the government managers, the social workers and (in North America and later the rest of the world) the purveyors of privilege for social controllers disguised as "activists"-the social workers, the psychologists and the "beneficiaries" of campaigns against "isms". There was gold in them thar' hills, and the gold was indeed mined.
In the earlier time it was indeed possible that large segments, youth or otherwise, would join the "counterculture"(sic), the "revolutionary movement"(sic) or whatever it was called. At Times they did. Today......leftism, in its historical expressions, has failed and is seen RIGHTLY as the class interest of those whose social product is NOTHING but social control. At its "best" it will continue to pass more laws and restrict freedom more and more, all in the name of the "greater good" of course and in alliance with other more traditional segments of the bureaucracy in which it has found a place.
To my great pleasure anarchism has become the dominant force on the "extreme left " today. This is despite the occasional blips of orthodox Stalinism or Trotskyism in a few localities. It is despite the almost genetic aversion of present days anarchists to the traditional methods of organization that anarchism advocated, and, hence, the attraction of pseudo-organizations that attempt to resurrect the corpse of Leninism.
But still...there are many attempts at anarchist organization in the world today. Often they are quite successful such as the CGT of Spain. But they operate in a milieu of what is essentially despair. The grossest examples of this occur in North America where such perversions as "primitivism", "anti-oppression work" have replaced the view that anarchism HAS a future with the view that building a cult is "What is To Be Done". Of course those within the cult cannot comprehend how glorifying Maoist bank robbers as heroes or babbling about the "end of civilization" inspires nothing more than disgust in normal people. But in the world of despair building your own fantasy world becomes the only thing you can do.
There is a distinct possibility that anarchism has a future and that this is being pointed towards by the efforts of the European syndicalists, the platformists worldwide and others who can see anarchism in a realistic fashion rather than a cultish fashion.
Let us hope so.