Activism or militancy?
Reposted from El Machete
By: Guillermo Uc
Why is it so difficult to take on militancy? Why is it so comfortable to remain an activist? Although both terms can be confused as synonyms (or there are those who want to pass them off as such), each has a different content. Therefore, in order to reach an answer to the questions raised, it is necessary to distinguish between both categories, contrasting them.
A militant is someone who makes a commitment to a political position and defends it actively and permanently. A militant cannot conceive of his life without the political position he has assimilated. He understands that his actions, however small, will be aimed at achieving greater objectives, at achieving an accumulation of forces so that his objective is fulfilled.
The militant is driven by necessity. The militant becomes such because he comes to understand that the only way to change his situation is through taking sides and leaving inaction behind. It is not surprising, then, that in the present era the majority of individuals who assume militancy belong to the working class or to the popular sectors, because they feel the chains of capitalist slavery firsthand and therefore react by organizing themselves.
But this objective is not only personal, individual, isolated. The militant understands that he is not the only being on the face of the earth who lives in a calamitous situation. Whoever assumes militancy does so because he comes to understand that there are hundreds of thousands of individuals who live under the same conditions as him. In this sense, he links up with others in an organized way to achieve the same goal since he understands that his emancipation cannot be achieved without the emancipation of the rest of the masses. A militant is not necessarily someone who is a militant in a political party. The student who is a militant does so in a student organization; the worker, in the union; the inhabitant of the neighborhoods and belonging to the popular sectors, in the neighborhood committee, in the association of the same branch of production, etc., and, of course, the most advanced, will end up militating in the party of the working class. Militant and organization are two words that will never be found separated. The “militant” who considers that he can be without being organized, simply is not one. Therefore, the militant is not motivated by an individual, selfish, egocentric motivation, but rather, if he dedicates his life to his cause, it is for collective, mass objectives. Therefore, the militant understands that his value as an individual is relative, and only acquires importance when his individual acts contribute to collective tasks.
Is militancy, then, a renunciation of individuality? No, because the militant understands that he is responsible for his own individual actions. It is up to him to ensure that, in his workplace, in his school, in his neighbourhood, or wherever he sets foot, the rest of the masses know his positions (which, as we have said, are not only his own, but those of the organisation to which he belongs), understand them and adopt them as their own. He, too, as an individual, is responsible for the mistakes he makes. Of course, the organisation, as a collective, is responsible for the correct training, both theoretically and practically, of the militant, for the supervision of the militant's actions, etc., but the militant, as an individual, is responsible for ensuring that his actions and lifestyle correspond with what he acquires in consciousness through his organisation.
One type of militant is the militant of the working class party, that is, of the Communist Party of his country. He is not a fan of the movement for the movement's sake. A communist militant is someone who knows how to estimate the true value of a cause or, in this case, of the concrete way in which a cause is fought for. On the one hand, he knows that, although there are "struggles" that proclaim themselves to be just, these can be deceptive. For example, contemporary opportunists in Mexico maintain that, more or less, the "just" struggle of the working class in our country is to support social democracy. An activist without criteria easily falls prey to this deception; the communist militant understands that this is demagogy, denounces this thought as such and shows the masses that for them this movement does not represent any advance in their struggle. On the other hand, the militant is aware that, although there are just struggles, not all the ways in which they are expressed deserve to be supported. For example, the communist party understands that in Mexico the struggle against the dispossession of land from the impoverished peasantry is, in general, a just struggle, and therefore it tries to attract the working and oppressed masses to it and participate in actions that effectively contribute to that end. In those cases, the rest of the masses that participate in that struggle can be certain that the communist militant will always be there, that he will be the first to arrive and the last to leave, even in the most adverse conditions. But it is also aware that not all the expressions that occur in that struggle have a concrete end, that there are some that have no head or tail and that are doomed to failure. If the struggle against land dispossession, for example, is being dragged into voting for the social democracy that promises to “take action on the matter,” even though that same social democracy has endorsed dispossession in previous times, then the communist militant must expose to the masses the folly of continuing down that path and firmly criticize those who promote it. Therefore, the militant is not guided by the spontaneous movement, but, on the contrary, he tries to make the spontaneous movement become something conscious, organized, and it is also his duty to assess whether that spontaneous movement has a future or whether it will remain trapped in the logic of mere activism.
In order not to be a slave to the movement, the communist militant tries to educate himself ideologically and politically, both individually and collectively in his organization. The militant must read, educate himself, and raise his cultural level. If he does not want to be swept away by everything that arises, but also if he wants to give an organized character to the struggle, he must have a clear understanding of the world and the reality that surrounds him. But the militant must not limit himself to just reading and acquiring bookish training. The communist militant can only find a verification of the theory in practical reality and learn from it.
The communist militant is someone who is discreet, he is an enemy of the morbid desire to attract attention, to attract cameras, spotlights and microphones, unless the organization's assessment deems it necessary. The militant is in the fight not for medals or recognition, but for the conviction of achieving the objective at any cost.
So, is the militant a slave of the organization? Is he an automaton that obeys without reason? Not at all. Organizations are made up of their militants and would be nothing without them. The organization exists because there are militants who not only make it up, but who give it direction, strengthen it, enrich its analysis, propose solutions, analyze the results.
It is therefore natural that organisations, movements and struggles will be successful because of the participation of those elements who have taken on a militancy. However, why are there so few militants compared to the multitude of activists? To get one step closer to the answer to this question, we must therefore define what an activist is and how he or she differs from a militant.
Unlike the militant, the activist has a very weak commitment. Although he appears to be committed to a cause, this commitment is usually circumstantial. He is moved by something that is in the media, that is his condition for being part of it. He is moved more by a personal, moral or passionate motivation than by a political one.
This is also because activists are not driven by necessity. Activists generally do not belong to the exploited classes under capitalism. Their way of thinking and acting is due to the fact that they belong to the petty bourgeoisie or have a relatively comfortable lifestyle. Therefore, it is personal satisfaction, feeling good about themselves, knowing that they are doing the right thing, in other words, the voice of their petty bourgeois conscience, that “forces” them to mobilize. As a consequence, the limits of their “obligation” are defined by themselves and, therefore, their membership in a struggle tends to be temporary or depend on their mood. One day they can be there and the next day they can’t, if they don’t feel like it. Their commitment is as voluntary as charity; they are capable of committing themselves to such an extent that it does not require a greater effort than they would devote to a hobby, that is, they can devote their spare time.
Not belonging to the exploited classes, the activist does not have to (nor does he wish to) submit to the leadership of the working classes who have taken up militancy and who, because of their clarity, naturally tend to be recognized as the vanguard of the rest of the masses. The activist's ego is offended when his academic training, his "experience" based more than anything on age (which may mean nothing, in reality, if he never learned anything from it) or his supposed "prestige" end up being overtaken by the clarity of the militant's conscience. The tantrum is his immediate response, even threatening to abandon the struggle if what he wants is not done.
This is why activists are not interested in organizing themselves. In fact, they are terrified of the organization, which they see as a monster that devours everything. “Nobody tells me what to do!” is the maxim of the activist, since they perceive the organization as a threat to their individuality. The self is everything for the activist. For them, the success of the struggle will depend on their isolated individual action. It is not surprising that the activist’s method is closer to anarchism, a bourgeois, disorganizing, liquidating and even reactionary current.
The activist does not care about having a political, ideological, or in some cases, not even cultural background. “Why all this theory?” is the second maxim of the activist. Therefore, it is not surprising that the activist is like the shrimp that falls asleep, because it ends up being dragged by the current of any fashionable movement that arises. Today it can be an environmentalist, tomorrow it can be a feminist, and the day after tomorrow it can be an expert in “decolonialism.” In the end, it does not matter what the struggle is about. It may well be against the genocide in Gaza, as in the unity of the left so that the “transformation” continues in the case of Mexico, without considering the contradictions that this expresses. What matters is to be in it, even if they are contradictory positions.
But the few activists who have acquired the habit of reading through academia have the serious problem of not knowing how to distinguish between a true, correct theory that can be verified in reality and a “theory” that is the brainchild of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois intellectuals and that, therefore, only exists in the heads of those who proposed it. For them, everything is valid, because as long as there is one case in a million that verifies what they read, it is approved as a correct theory. It does not matter that material reality works from generality and not from particularities. For them, everything is a matter of interpretation, nothing concrete exists, because everything depends on how one wants to interpret it. But they themselves are hypocrites with their self-imposed rule, because if the explanation for the phenomena is found in Marx, Engels, Lenin or Stalin, that is dogmatism and sectarianism; but if Enrique Dussel, Judith Butler, Walter Benjamin or Michel Foucault say it, it must be true. And woe betide any “dogmatist” who wants to argue with the interpretation of our tantrum-laden activists!
The activist's petty bourgeois roots are reflected in his obsession with standing out, with being the first to pose in front of the cameras, with monopolizing the microphones, even if he has nothing relevant to say. "Let it be seen that I am in the public eye, even if I never show up for the most laborious and least attractive work!" is the activist's greatest concern, even before the cause he boasts of supporting. If he is not given the attention he demands, if there are no conditions to prove that he was the one who was here or there, his assessment is that it is not worth continuing there. "I have been ignored in better places!" will be the activist's whimper, before being seen again.
In short, it can be seen that if there are many activists but few militants, it is because activism is the comfort of doing things when one wants and not fearing the consequences of not doing them, of wanting to have the best of both worlds (recognition without commitment), not having to worry about the dull work, or training, or taking on tasks, or being accountable to anyone other than one's petty bourgeois conscience. On the contrary, militancy is not taken on by just anyone, it is taken on by someone who has decided to give up part of their individuality and ego to merge into the organised revolutionary torrent. Being a militant means being, as the Indian Naborí would say, the last to have, the last to eat, the last to sleep and the first to die. And that is something that few are willing to accept, especially when they ignore the conditions that make sacrifice preferable to misery. In other words, we can conclude that the militant is in a higher category of commitment than the activist.
But is there anything wrong with that? Does it affect the struggle? If there are militants and activists, why not let the militants be militants and the activists remain activists? Why not follow the “live and let live” approach? In the end, we are all “comrades in the same struggle,” aren’t we? That would be precisely the reasoning of the activist, who sees no further than his own nose and thinks that individual actions and decisions have no consequences on the struggle of the proletarian and popular masses. The militant reasons in the opposite direction; he knows that it is a fundamental issue, that one or another form of political activity influences the organizational processes.
Of course, although we reject the petty-bourgeois method of activism, we do not condemn all activists in the abstract. On the contrary, we think that this first form of joining the struggle can be developed, polished, improved and, eventually, turned into militancy. But we are clear that, if the struggles of the working class and the popular sectors intend to advance and conquer better positions against the class enemy, they will not achieve this by following the activist method. They can only unleash their full force by assuming a militant commitment, whether in their unions, student organizations, neighborhood organizations and, of course, in the Communist Party.