Quotes from this zine:
It is problematic that the left-wing scene itself has become an inscrutable mix of political projects and sources of income. Self-employed people do contract work for leftist publishing houses; left-wing magazines offer paid jobs; many of these jobs you only get if you have the right political connections… this goes as far as self-employed activists, who protest against nuclear power, banks or gene-technology for pay; paid by people who lack the time for protesting themselves. Once the boundaries between political engagement and earning money become blurry it becomes impossible to distinguish between what people actually think and what they propagate for professional reasons.
Many people of the ‘radical left’ work as organisers for trade unions or as lecturers at the university. A quote from a comrade in London: “When I attend meetings to ‘support cleaning workers’ half of the meeting consists of people because they are just about to write a freelance article about the topic or because they do a PHD on ‘migration and affective labour’ - or because they have a job or function within the union and are therefore required to participate. Later on in the pub this schizophrenia continues (“do you know what, I just have to finish this article for the Guardian, this then will give me more time to write more radical stuff” etc.).
I dislike the use of "schizophrenia" here and wish they'd chosen another way to describe this phenomenon instead of turning to ableism.
However, the sentiment still stands and is something I have long been frustrated by.
Nearly half of the former radical left will now be dependent on political party funding (mainly from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation of the ‘Partei die Linke’) or on doing professional ‘training against racism’ at schools, or ‘human-rights oriented children and youth work’, and so on.
The left movement as a whole pays a high price for such kind of individual careers, the negative repercussions on the ‘socio-political fabric” are grave. The political left is not external to the process of the extreme increase of social inequality in society; compared to the rest of society during the last years the income gap within the left will have widened even more. Individual careers on one side, increasing pressure and atomisation on the other side pushes more people towards individually feathering their own nests. The turn towards ‘Realpolitik’ in the radical left in the first half of the 1990s was enforced by people with an intellectual and finally social self-interest in the (improved/reformed) continuation of the social division of labour (e.g. Joachim Hirsch propagated in his “The National Competitive State” in 1995 “revolutionary politics are impossible”). Today left congresses are organised like university lectures, left speak and academic jargon have become indiscernible. And people like Roland Roth collaborate with the state intelligence service - see in more detail the book Gegnerbestimmung.
While more and more people turn their back on the state (see for example the falling election turnout), the formerly radical left has moved towards it and at various points it wasn't possible anymore to distinguish the left from state institutions. The left doesn't know their enemies anymore; the state security administrations become increasingly powerful in Germany, most of all the intelligence service [Verfassungsschutz] - and the formerly radical left share panels with representatives of these institutions or have their anti-racist pamphlets financed by it - even after the uncovering of the NSU!
It would be worth some separate research to see how many formerly left activists globally contribute on behalf of European and US-American foundations to the fact that movements of upheaval such as in Egypt are not getting out of control, that they orient themselves towards civil-society/democratic values and don't radicalise themselves through social conflicts. Also, a historical analysis of how the decline of movements result in institutionalisation, but how this institutionalisation was already present as ‘tendencies of professionalisation’ during the movement itself, could help us progress in this necessary debate; e.g. some research into the composition of the First and the Second International would be interesting (artisanal workers’ clubs vs. leadership of engineers and lawyers, who declared better state planning to be their main aim).
Finally bin the ‘precarity-ideologies’! No one has ever promised that in capitalism everyone will get a position and income according to their qualifications! Fulfilment in your work and profession has always been a privilege of the middle-classes. Whoever sees a guaranteed/permanent job according to one's university graduation as their special and individual right, rather than criticises the capitalist rat-race behind such promises and divisive structures, affirms capitalist competition. Instead of complaining about a lack of professional prospects, the ‘overqualified precarious’ should rather criticise the capitalist social relations around them!
You cannot simply proceed in a professional career and be ‘revolutionary’ in your free-time. We need our own structures as a material alternative to the ‘profession’; we need commonly organised living arrangements, collectives and (social) centres which would allow as a different way to approach ‘work’: to kick a shit-job if necessary; to work for a low-wage, because the job is politically interesting; to stir up a work-place collectively. Instead of ‘professionalisation’ and Realpolitik we have to advance the movement through a continuous international exchange.
