Can socialists be happy?

Apr 17, 2018

Can socialists be happy?

Hello, again.

I don't know how to write to a list of mostly-strangers about anything personal in any way other than bluntly, so--my father passed away two weeks ago now. He had been ill for a while, and he went on his terms as much as anyone can. I am pulling myself together, attempting to dive back into work (always how I deal with problems), thank you for those of you who already know and have sent kind words. If you're so inclined, you can make a donation to JFREJ in his name--Charles Jaffe. Or you can just continue onward past the messy personal stuff.

Because personal stuff is always messy, and it interferes with life at all turns. I think back to this Corey Robin piece a lot, about "the point of socialism is to convert hysterical misery into ordinary unhappiness." It was a piece about neoliberal healthcare reform, and the ways in which "choice" actually converts so often into "more work" for all of us, work that interferes with our ability to live our lives. With the health insurance system we have, we have to spend all this time picking a plan, comparing plans, etc. etc. Corey writes:

"In real (or at least our preferred) life, we do have other, better things to do. We have books to read, children to raise, friends to meet, loved ones to care for, amusements to enjoy, drinks to drink, walks to take, webs to surf, couches to lie on, games to play, movies to see, protests to make, movements to build, marches to march, and more. Most days, we don’t have time to do any of that. We’re working way too many hours for too little pay, and in the remaining few hours (minutes) we have, after the kids are asleep, the dishes are washed, and the laundry is done, we have to haggle with insurance companies about doctor’s bills, deal with school officials needing forms signed, and more."

It is not that with socialism people will not get sick, and die. People will still fight, and struggle, and have sad days and tragedies. But we will not have to struggle just to be able to grieve, to be sad, to step away from work and just be humans, together, for a while.

I am fortunate at this point in my life that I have understanding editors and colleagues who support me (and sent lovely baskets full of cheese and chocolate, thank you all), and the financial stability to take a little time off--not to mention to be able to get on a plane and fly down to my parents' home for my father's last days. The things I was able to have, I want everyone to have, and then some. I want my mother not to be spending her grieving time fighting with the nursing home over the bill. I want the hard emotional choices we make not to be shaped one iota by how much it will cost.

My favorite definition of socialism, always, is from Orwell (and yes, I know about the list, and it sucks, but this piece is still beautiful). It is from "Can Socialists Be Happy?" which is about the impossibility, also, of utopia. What is happiness? What is it that we are aiming for?

"The Socialist objective is not a society where everything comes right in the end, because kind old gentlemen give away turkeys. What are we aiming at, if not a society in which ‘charity’ would be unnecessary? We want a world where Scrooge, with his dividends, and Tiny Tim, with his tuberculous leg, would both be unthinkable. But does that mean we are aiming at some painless, effortless Utopia? At the risk of saying something which the editors of Tribune may not endorse, I suggest that the real objective of Socialism is not happiness. Happiness hitherto has been a by-product, and for all we know it may always remain so. The real objective of Socialism is human brotherhood. This is widely felt to be the case, though it is not usually said, or not said loudly enough. Men use up their lives in heart-breaking political struggles, or get themselves killed in civil wars, or tortured in the secret prisons of the Gestapo, not in order to establish some central-heated, air-conditioned, strip-lighted Paradise, but because they want a world in which human beings love one another instead of swindling and murdering one another. And they want that world as a first step. Where they go from there is not so certain, and the attempt to foresee it in detail merely confuses the issue."

I was just sharing this piece with a friend the other day, and I have been thinking about it since--the way Orwell argues that happiness is only understood as a contrast to unhappiness. In this particular context, I am thinking about it because this particular friend and several others have made my own sadness more bearable and in showing me that reminded me that there is something important we learn in the darkest moments of our lives from the people who manage to reach us through the gloom.

Writing

Working Families Party progressives, liberated from Cuomo and conventional politics at the New York Daily News
Who's protecting home-care workers in the #MeToo era? at Dame Magazine
The Collective Power of #Metoo at Dissent
March For Our Lives Was About More Than Gun Control at The New Republic
A Party Within the Democratic Party at The New Republic