The Importance of Revolutionaries

Photo and art by Rita J. King.

The latest issue of the New Yorker has a touching ode to Norman Mailer who died last year. It’s a collection of his letters starting in 1945 and continuing on to 2005 reflecting on politics and the state of the world. The letters are poignant, sometimes uplifting, and other times sober and depressing reflections on the world Norman Mailer hoped for in his future and the world that he died in. Mailer’s tireless writings and words paint a vivid a journey of optimism, critical thinking, and a strong commitment to passion and art.

As I read the letters, after having read the Sturm und Drang cartoons and analysis of the financial collapse in the US, I looked for and found reason for inspiration in one of the letters, which I’ve included below. It reminded me of two people who are current sources of daily inspiration for me: My friends Cory Doctorow and Rita J. King with whom I’m proud to say I share a generation and worldview. Cory and Rita are revolutionaries for today’s generation. Not coincidentally, they are both writers and they are both people who I am proud to call dear friends.

They inspire me not because of their visibility or accomplishments, though those are many, but because of their tireless commitment to values, ethics and most importantly art, creativity and the imagination – concepts that seems to be so devalued in today’s commoditized society. They write. They write every day. They write as if their lives depend on it. I think their lives do depend on it. Not for fiscal reasons, but for existential reasons.

At a recent event Cory was asked how he manages to write and still do all the other things that he does. His answer, “I divide everything I have to do into two to three minute blocks and then I never let two or three minutes go by without doing something.” In Rita’s case and, as readers of this blog know I work with Rita at Dancing Ink Productions, it is her indefatigable commitment to the healing potential of art and creativity for our society. I still draw regular inspiration from Rita’s treatise on The Imagination Age, a term she coined a year ago, which she wrote in a fever dream shortly after our mixed reality event in Doha, Qatar. It’s taken me months to fully internalize one of Rita’s mantras, which I think is well-suited to our present era: “Peace is not the absence of conflict; it is one’s attitude toward it.” Indeed.

Both Cory and Rita were raised by revolutionary parents and perhaps that’s a window into how they face the world. Cory, as he has written often, was raised by Trotskyites. Rita was raised by artists – her entire family a group of, as she describes them, “compulsive writers.”

One letter in particular, which Mr. Mailer addressed to literary translator Eiichi Yamanishi touched me and reminded me of the importance of what it means to be a revolutionary in times of transition. Mailer discusses the importance of Trotsky and, more broadly, the critical importance of revolutionaries in society and the challenges the United States faces in facilitating its own revolutionary culture toward positive change. (Apologies in advance to the New Yorker if this does not constitute fair use. I encourage readers to read the full article. You won’t be disappointed!)

To Eiichi Yamanishi
October 23, 1961
Dear Eiichi,
. . . I’ve always felt a deep kinship with Trotsky and while I no longer could call myself in any way a Trotskyite it does not mean that I do not have a profound admiration for him. The difficulty here in America is that the conventional forms of revolutionary Marxism simply do not apply to the peculiarly intricate structure of American society. By this I do not mean that Marxism no longer applies but only that for it to become exciting again as a style of thought for the best of the young people it must be expanded by some genius who can comprehend the complexities of the American phenomena. I think in a way I was trying to point toward a possible direction in the last paragraph of “The White Negro.” You see, Eiichi, the difficulty is that the working class in America is utterly without a revolutionary consciousness and the source of whatever rebellion there is in this country comes, not from people who function within the economy, but from the growing number of young people who feel profoundly alienated from their country and its history. It is possible that something may come of all this in the next ten years, for the spirit of rebellion is genuine. It is just that none of us has the intellectual stature to conceive of the problem in a radical new way. In America it is not that surplus value is extorted from us so much as that we are spiritually exploited and denied the opportunity to find our true growth. This is no doubt the highest stage of capitalism. You can see that in a situation like this it makes little sense to think of oneself as a Trotskyite. One might as easily call oneself a Bourbon or a follower of Batko Makhno. I am certain that if Trotsky were alive and in this country he would no longer be a Trotskyite. . . .
Warmly,
Norman

To draw from a contemporary meme in popular culture today, I liken my meeting Cory and Rita to the storyline in the 1999 movie The Matrix. Meeting them is nothing short of what it must feel like for someone who has lived inside the Matrix when they first meet someone who lives outside the Matrix—either by birth or from having escaped. Our culture lost someone critical in Norman Mailer. But there are others. And Cory and Rita are but two who shed light on the pattern and system we live in and the importance of seeing beyond that system into our greater potential as humans.

As our culture moves through this period of intense transition, who inspires you?