On Thinking Politically

A provocation

“There’s only one way to hold a district; you must study human nature and act accordin’.”— George Washington Plunkitt, Leader of the Fifteenth Assembly District & Chairman of the Elections Committee of Tammany Hall

We judge our enemies by their actions, and our allies by their intentions.

This is a rule universally practiced, if rarely admitted. We excuse the shortcomings of those who share our goals, while holding our opponents accountable for all they do—or fail to do.

This double standard is, to an extent, unavoidable—especially in political life. But it lies at the heart of a deep deficiency in modern political thought and commentary: that those who “think politically” and who consider themselves cold-blooded realists are, in fact, idealists of the worst kind.

We misrepresent facts on the ground, we cling dogmatically to unimaginative strategies out of habit (or “principle”), and we ultimately do our own cause a disservice.

This is not to say we must abandon ambition and retreat into some mushy “pragmatism.” Liberal centrists—those clinging to an incremental West Wing vision of how politics works—are no more realistic (and likely less so) than the average Jacobin reader. One of our primary tasks must be to expose and critique such narrow visions of “realism” that prevent us from perceiving and acting realistically.

But our starting point for thinking politically, I believe, must be the “real world” into which we are thrown: a world of concrete institutions, of people with stubbornly held hopes and inconvenient prejudices. In short, a world of conditions—social, historical, material—that the attainment of our goals must contend with.

Political thought begins by facing these conditions. Political action begins by working through—and, if necessary, changing—those conditions. And political ethics begins by claiming responsibility for what we do (or don’t do) in light of those conditions.

Beyond Good and Evil

Those who “think politically” often conceive of politics as applied ethics.

True, we might style ourselves as hardboiled realists, exactingly attentive to power and domination in all their forms. We might develop elaborate theories of institutions and how they frustrate our preferred outcomes. We might believe we’ve purged all morality and sentimentality from our analysis.

But despite our realpolitik in the streets, we are generally moralists in the sheets: we want people to act the way we think they should, in order to achieve the ends we want. Any action that falls short—by compromise or intention—we criticize mercilessly. Anyone who shares our ideals, no matter how ineffective, we tend to forgive. Their “heart was in the right place.”

There’s a term for this: what Max Weber long ago called the ethics of conviction. And while it has a place in politics, I worry that for many of us—myself included—it is the default position. It may feel good to be permanently In The Right, but this draws our attention away from the real world of politics which is the only place where “the right” can actually be realized. It distracts us from the stubborn conditions that must be grappled with or transformed in order for our ideals to become reality.

And such a tendency is particularly obvious on social media, where taking the right stance is often rewarded more than achieving tangible results, the ethics of conviction becomes not just tempting—but performative.

Getting Real

The opposite of this “ideals-first” view is, of course, political realism. Its starting point is not ideals or morals or general principles, but the operation of social and political institutions. It begins not with how humans should act, but with what moves humans to act in given circumstances. Its guiding question is not “what should be done,” but rather: who is doing what to whom, and for whose benefit?

This question—tersely distilled into the famous “who-whom?” by Lenin—lies at the heart of any responsible political analysis today.

I can hear the objections:

“Realism is just opportunism by another name.”
“Thinking realistically reduces politics to mere technique.”
“It prevents us from offering radical critiques or imagining alternatives.”

These are risks—but I believe they’re overstated.

On the one hand, the challenge of thinking realistically includes penetrating what passes for “realism” today: the ideological distortions, wishful thinking, and mind-numbing “common sense” that prevent us from truly understanding the world. We need a history of the present—an account that reveals and dismantles the manipulations and power relations that limit our imagination. Realism should be critical, not complacent.

On the other hand, thinking realistically does not mean abandoning values or vision. We can apply realism whether we aim to conserve, reform, or overthrow the current system. The point is that our analysis must begin with the actual conditions that must be engaged—painful, unyielding, or inconvenient though they may be—and with strategies calibrated to those facts.

Finally, realism still leaves room for ideals and principles. Political change, after all, has always come from a mixture of force and moral suasion. The Civil Rights Movement, for example, depended on both violent riots and nonviolent rhetoric for its success. The point is that without a sense of the conditions under which suasion and violence are needed, by treating either of these as absolutes, we wind up self-sabotage.

The task is not to choose between realism and idealism, but to bind them together—ruthlessly.

A New Political Ethics

This brings us, finally, to ethics.

To treat politics as “applied ethics” is, in many ways, to abstract ourselves from the present. It’s a framework built for bystanders—those standing at a safe distance from the scrum. Above all, it’s a view unconcerned with the consequences of our actions: for if we truly believe that “evil triumphs when good men do nothing,” then doing nothing out of principle is no better than doing nothing out of complacency or fear. Yes, we might fear that by being involved in the system we wind up legitimizing it - but if that’s the case, we should at least take ownership of the consequences that fall from our non-participation. To do otherwise is an abdication of responsibility to the broader community of which we are a part.

In concrete terms: we must either accept the rules of a system governed by the strong, or organize and become strong enough to change the rules. To excuse our losses by complaining about the actions of the powerful is to compound defeat with complacency. In the words of Brecht, "It takes courage to say that the good were defeated not because they were good, but because they were weak."

This is tough medicine to swallow. And I exaggerate, perhaps—but only slightly. Because if we truly want to act in an ethically responsible manner, we must not only act with conviction, but through responsibility. That means facing the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. It means taking responsibility for the consequences of what we support, what we oppose, and what we allow through inaction.

We must think and act from a realistic perspective. Then, and only then, can we save our communities, our economy, and our country.