Against Preemptive Surrender
Surrender is great. Not even kidding: I love the way surrender opens up possibility in my life.
When I hit a wall, in the world or my own psyche, I’ll bash myself against it more than a few times before accepting the way things are, the way I am, the obduracy of what-is. When the pain gets great enough, I surrender.
The second I surrender, the wall changes shape and texture, sprouts windows. The world opens up. I’ve room to breathe, think, feel. Something new can happen.
So, yeah, I love surrender.
Sometimes, too, though, I break through first. (Not often, I admit.) That’s a different kind of possibility. It’s about remaking some corner of the world in a way that works for me, that I think will work for others, that is in some broad sense of the word “good.”
Breaking through walls is pretty great.
To live in this world, to feel its beauty and joy and soaring possibilities, takes a lot of surrendering. At the same time, a fair amount of hurling myself at the wall is worthwhile along the way, too — how else put together the fragments but by knocking the separating walls down? You’ve kinda got to love both surrender and its opposite if you want to live well.
Politically, though, surrender is less lovable.
Politics is negotiation between competing interests. On a personal basis, surrender is opening to the world’s bigness in which I am small. Far more that’s good can happen than I imagined. Politically, surrender is conceding to entities whose interests are at odds with my own. At best, they will then take my interests into account when deciding how to organize the world. There’s no special reason to count on that, though. Far less that’s good can happen than I hoped.
Personally, surrender’s about an open relationship with being in its infinite complexity. Politically, it’s more of a last-ditch effort to sway some powerful entity by abasing myself.
“Don’t worry,” political surrender says, “I won’t buck you. Remember that when you’re organizing your prisoners!”
A good negotiation doesn’t need for anybody to surrender. There’s give and take. It’s open, conversational. Many things can happen. Yes, our interests are at odds, but not absolutely so. The point is to discover how they may become less at odds, together.
Political surrender, by contrast, is making the best I can of an unhappy negotiation outcome. It’s a way of carrying on after negotiations have failed so badly that my interests are entirely at the mercy of whomever I was just contesting them with. Unavoidable sometimes, but hardly a way of sidestepping a bout with the wall.
Why preemptively surrender to the very worst elements of the Democratic Party?
When you proclaim, in December of 2018, or July of 2019, or any other moment in the primary election period, “Any Dem in 2020!” that’s political surrender. Your contribution to the Democratic Party’s process of selecting its nominee for president in the 2020 general election is to promise to vote for whomever the most powerful entities in the party prefer. You promise, way ahead of any possibility of acting on that promise, to support whatever the most powerful people in the DNC end up wanting. Further, you assert, you’ll do whatever you can to bring your friends around. Around to what? Whatever the most powerful people in the party want.
Isn’t that an odd negotiating position?
Let’s say you understand perfectly well that party elites are, by definition, people who have disproportionate power (which means that they have an interest in keeping disproportionate power, which means that they have an interest in preventing most people in the party from securing competing interests, which means that they have an interest in keeping democratic negotiation to something of a minimum because that’s what makes the power disproportionate in the first place).
Let’s say you see clearly that the Democratic Party is complicit with the (yes: far, far worse) GOP in producing conditions for Trump and Trumpism (through decades of centrist purity politics and kow-towing to banks and big business and meeting racists halfway and etcetera). Let’s also say you’ve concluded that the most powerful people in the DNC are, to understate the case a bit, not entirely committed to fighting our civilizational and species-level climate emergency.
I’m not even getting into my own political interests here, right? This is all basic System Functionality 101 stuff.
So what exactly are you saying to Democratic Party powerbrokers when you declare #BlueNoMatterWho?
You’re saying, “I know we haven’t started negotiating yet, but I’d like to note in advance that I give up.”
You’re telling the most powerful people in the Democratic Party that you’ll do everything in your power to remove the only obstacle to them pursuing their interests: substantive popular mobilization with uncertain outcomes.
You’re preemptively surrendering, promising to do what you can to prevent legitimacy problems from forcing them to compromise their interests. Political surrender is your starting point for negotiation with the Democratic Party’s representatives of the world-destroying ultra-wealthy (representatives whose approach to politics is themselves to preemptively surrender to the GOP, though with many fine and furious words).
You’re shouting to the world that everyone had better fall in line with whatever horribly anti-democratic, Trump-enabling, climate-destroying shitbag the most powerful people in the Democratic Party prefer. Anyone who doesn’t commit to that sight unseen, you warn, is not pragmatic.
In this scenario, you think you are being pragmatic.
You are not being pragmatic. Preemptive surrender is not a pragmatic approach to democratic politics. It’s only pragmatic if you think your negotiating partner is a Mongol horde.
“But, Ira, are you saying you won’t vote for wet toast or a cardboard box or a sock with googly eyes in 2020? Don’t you understand how dangerous Trump is?!”
Do you understand the danger? Do you understand that negotiating with powerful entities isn’t most effectively begun with an announcement of your surrender? Do you understand that Trump, as a symptom, is only one of many dangers to the very possibility of democracy? Do you understand how dangerous it is to treat the political party you identify with like a kidnapper you have to placate?
Do you understand that, if you preemptively surrender, the people who do not share your interests and who are very good at pursuing their own have no need to negotiate with your interests?
If you recognize the danger, it’s time to start acting like it.
Stop saying you’ll vote for wet toast in 2020. Stop telling people not to primary top Democrats. Stop making excuses for the criminal inaction of the DNC when it comes to #ActuallyResistingAnything. Stop treating the ridiculous dog-and-pony show of Muellerism like it’s real politics, and not a shitty version of sports. And, for the love of anything holy, stop ignoring the depressing effects of centrist purity politics on downstream voting.
Stop surrendering to your political adversaries in advance and start surrendering to a world of greater possibility. Start being realistic about politics. Negotiate for your actual interests. Demand more.
Start letting the outcome of your political negotiations be uncertain.
Or don’t. For my part, I’ll work for what I want to see now. And I’ll do whatever I’m going to do in 2020.