Every 30 to 40 years

I recall touring the University of Vermont as a prospective student around 2004. I sat in what must have been a history or political science class. The professor was arguing there was an upsurge in leftism every 30 to 40 years or so. He talked about the labor movement of the 1930s and the civil-rights movement of the 1960s.

I’m not sure if the professor said this explicitly, but the clear implication of his lecture was we were overdue for another upsurge. That’s what I certainly took from it. As someone who grew up in a progressive environment and whose politics were in the process of radicalizing, I found this prospect to be incredibly exciting.

Arguably, we saw that upsurge in the 2010s, with the emergence of Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter and MeToo. Still, the decade wasn’t the earthshaking era of change I’d hoped for and sometimes I can’t help thinking, is that really it? Politics has realigned in different ways, but it often feels like we’re settling into a new status quo.

I was thinking about that visit to UVM this past summer, when I read two books. The first, by Hannah Proctor, was called Burnout: The Emotional Experience of Political Defeat. The author, inspired by her own reaction to the failure of the movements of the 2010s, combs through history to see how past leftists dealt with such setbacks.

The second, by Vincent Bevins, was called If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution. The author makes the case movements of the 2010s failed because of a reliance on horizontalism. It’s a global history in which American politics barely merit a mention. Still, the lessons presumably apply here as well.

Both the books were released in the past couple of years. They’re good to read together, in my view, because they capture a common feeling on the left. I don’t mean to sound as if I disagree with the sentiment. It’s inarguable to a certain extent. The 2010s are over and we didn’t achieve the political gains for which we hoped.

Yet I wonder if we lose vital context when we divide history into such discrete eras. After all, activists from the 1930s, like A.J. Muste, helped lay the groundwork for the movements of the 1960s. Similarly, activists from the 1960s, like Angela Davis, helped lay the groundwork for the movements of the 2010s.

It’s not as if struggle stops between these periods of leftist upsurge. Maybe our sense of possibility becomes more circumscribed as we adjust to a kind of political trench warfare. However, gains are still made, and sometimes these are quite significant. Somebody needs to fight these important but less glamorous fights.

As I’ve gotten older, my appreciation has grown for the elderly activists who kept fighting between these periods of leftist upsurge. It’s easy to be a leftist during an upsurge. After all, the entire Overton Window shifts in a progressive direction. The real test is when a new equilibrium is established and conservatism regains its footing.

In the same way, I’ve become more understanding of how the initial hopes of those elderly activists hardened into fruitless dogma or diffused into ineffective compromise. I frequently worry in my efforts to become more practical I’m following the latter path. It’s a delicate balance which looks different for all activists.

So I plan to keep fighting in my own small way. I hope we can make gains, perhaps even significant ones, under what may be a new status quo. If that UVM professor was correct, the next leftist upsurge should take place in the 2040s or 2050s. I’ll be an old man by then and I pray my politics are still recognizably progressive.