If you think things are bad now just imagine how bad things will get. Liberalism is a progressive philosophy, which means that it cannot stop, it must constantly move and change. But it will change according to the logic that is Liberalism, towards creating the Autonomous Individual and the breaking apart of everything that stands in its way. So unless we stop it things can only get worse.
The question of course is how do we stop it?
Before we get to that I want to talk about the four things that we need to concern ourselves with:
- Ideology
- Politics
- Policy
- Organisation
Ideology is what do we believe and why do we believe it.
Politics is how do we get political power.
Policy is what do we want to do with political power once we have it.
Organisation is putting it all together, along with everything else that is required to achieve our aims.
I think that currently we are stuck in the ideology phase. We keep having the same discussions relating to the same subjects. Of course it is important to know what we believe and why we believe it. That is the correct starting point but it is a lousy finishing point. To achieve our aims we need to move from ideology without losing track of our ideology.
We need to start focusing on politics, policy and organisation. The gaining of political power, what we intend to do with that power, and we need to create the organisation to get there. None of these things are easy but they all need to be done. We would all like to short circuit the system and to change things right away, but I do not realistically see that happening. We need to learn patience and to accept that we need to do more than want things to change, we need to act.
But not in a stupid way, we need to do what Liberalism has done and create a logic. That way it is hard to lose your direction because that logic determines your direction. We need to be consistent in our thinking and in our direction. In war there are four phases:
- Retreat
- Defence
- Attack
- Advance
We need to understand that all four are valid in war and politics and that we will not always win, and to prepare for that. We are far too ready to accept defeat, instead of accepting that it is a phase that we have a choice in changing. We must stop thinking of ourselves as flotsam without any control over the future. We must stop simply complaining and begin the much harder job of changing things. To do that we need to organise, to do things while accepting that victory is only one possible outcome, that it is not preordained. But that that should not stop us because this is a long war. It will not be won in a day, a year or a decade, it will last longer than us. This war is eternal, politics has no winners, only constant fighters and if you stop fighting you can lose.
This is the paradox that we face; that while we can never win 100% of what we want we can lose 100% of what we have. We need to defeat our defeat and to do that we need to fight. In politics you fight as much with your mind as with your physical efforts. The way to fight is with organisation.
Let’s get organised.
Originally published at Upon Hope. You can find Mark’s Subscribestar here.