The United States is an empire, despite its democratic pretensions, and it is up to an informed citizenry to counteract that nefarious trajectory and reassert the values of the republic. The books discussed below provide us with the tools to do just that.
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In Praise of Idleness for the 21st Century
In all, we need a vision for the praising of idleness for the 21st century— embracing Bertrand Russell’s dedication to less work and more play for all while adapting it to the unique challenges we face today. We must go against the grain of the mindset of overwork and develop a healthy balance between labor and leisure, one that places work in the proper perspective: as a means for us to achieve all the things we want to do and not as the end that we constantly judge ourselves by. One of the only silver linings of the COVID-19 pandemic was that it gave us more time to be home with our loved ones, to finally read that book we’ve been wanting to read for forever, or to bake the perfect loaf of sourdough bread. It was a moment for us to radically reevaluate the basic conditions of our overworked, underpaid, and wildly burnt out society. People realized, many for the first time, that there was a world beyond work.
As such, they started to reconsider the basic work arrangements in this country, which have not changed in a major way in nearly 100 years. It is high time we reevaluate this setup and move towards a leisure-oriented society; it will not just help those like me who work in an office, but it will help gig workers and part-time folks to improve their wages and benefits. A better balance between work and leisure won’t only make for better employees, but it will make for better citizens. With workers having more free time and less economic precarity, they will be able to fully participate in our representative democracy. They can devote energies towards improving our societies— from education and healthcare to election workers and candidate canvassers. They can build the social movements and political programs necessary to improve our world. The fight for less work is not merely a slight change in our daily arrangements; it's a revolution that will radically alter our lives and our country for the better.
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“Steadfast Even in Persecution”: Voltairine de Cleyre and the Legacy of Thomas Paine
American anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre carried the torch of freethought and radicalism exemplified by revolutionary pamphleteer Thomas Paine, an iconoclasm infused with deep moral righteousness and an unrepentant sense of individualism. She defined her struggle for a stateless society in many of the same terms that Paine defined the fight for American independence, emphasizing political liberty, individual rights, equality, and mutual cooperation. She also stressed the importance of his character in her work. de Cleyre wrote of Paine that “he stood firm, proclaiming what he believed, not counting the cost. We may not believe as he; most of us do not. But that is the man we love: who has something in him superior to the judgments of men; who holds steadfast—steadfast even in persecution, even to death.” Likewise, we may not always agree with the convictions of Voltairine de Cleyre, but her own steadfastness echoed the legacy of America’s most underappreciated, and perennially misunderstood, founding father.
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The Culture of Survival: Christopher Lasch’s “Minimal Self”
Christopher Lasch’s The Minimal Self is an important, if overlooked, work in the canon of his thought; it articulated more directly his concerns and offered a clearer alternative than his more celebrated work. His crusade to stem the tide of narcissism and politics as cultural affect is something to be celebrated, for he anticipated so much of what came to pass. Our age is also one of crisis and survival, and if we seek to get beyond its confines, Lasch’s ideas represent part of the blueprint to change our collective future.
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“Militant Materialism”: V. I. Lenin, Socialism, and Religion
In his writings, Lenin defended traditional secularist values, such as the separation of church and state, liberty of conscience, and free religious association, while also calling for the political separation of religion from political parties and strategically advocating for the atheist/materialist worldview. While it would be too much to say that Lenin was a “humanist” in the general sense of the term, he was nevertheless a secularist whose insights on religion provide left humanists with clear, tactical advice on the interrelationship between faith and politics in the public sphere.
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Michael Brooks: Against the Web
Against the Web: A Cosmopolitan Answer to the New Right (2020, zer0 Books) gives us Michael Brooks’ uncompromising, hilarious, and brilliant analysis of the Intellectual Dark Web from a left perspective. He lays out for the reader all the problematic, insidious, and frightening aspects of the IDW and how we as leftists and socialists should respond to them. He ends the book with an optimistic message of humanism, universalism, and cosmopolitanism invigorated with class-conscious politics and a willingness to call to task the regressive tendencies of this new, but in some sense very old, configuration of the right.
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The Anti-Elitist Intellectualism of Isaac Asimov
The prolific science fiction author Isaac Asimov, best known for books such as I, Robot and the Foundation series, devoted his life to the causes of science, knowledge, and education. He valued the importance of intellect for a healthy democracy, lamenting the United States’ tendency towards anti-intellectualism. Yet, he also criticized the arrogance, foolishness, and elitism of some of the most intellectually-gifted in our society, particularly in his involvement with Mensa, the social organization of high-IQ individuals. His experiences with the group, good and especially bad, fostered his growing distaste for IQ tests, intellectual gamesmanship, and reactionary politics. In this essay, we’ll be exploring these themes and how their interaction cultivated Asimov’s unique position of anti-elitist intellectualism.
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