Social progress requires vision

Showing that potential supporters' feelings and doubts aren't warranted or are illogical was a second best approach. It wasn't nearly as good as to respond positively, to offer a visionary answer that would address people's doubts and lead forward, that would provide hope, that would give direction, and that would address them on their own terms.

Over thirty years have passed since then.

If we were to create a stack of all the speeches and talks and conversations and books and essays about how capitalism hurts people that have been offered in those thirty years – and if we were to create another stack of all the speeches and talks and conversations and books and essays about an alternative to capitalism and how it could benefit people that have been offered in those thirty years…the pile documenting misery would touch the sky, perhaps reach the moon, and the pile describing a superior option would barely leave the ground.

The question what do we want still exists. People ask it all the time. And yet even after having given so much attention to what's wrong, and so little attention to what we want, we still continue to give this fair, urgent, and insightful question minimal attention.

I think that is a huge error.

I think our collective allocation of energies and insight between these two priorities, addressing what is wrong and its origins, on the one hand, and providing a vision of what we desire and its logic and implications, on the other, needs to be overhauled. We need to do more of the latter.

But why does answering the query "What do we want?" matter so much that we should allot much more time and energy to it?

Imagine I were to deliver a brilliant, moving, compelling speech about the ravages of old age. I enumerate how old age limits our options, oppresses us…and finally kills us. I document the pain and suffering, accurately, movingly. The facts are uncontestable. The reality is undeniably horrible. After all, aging limits everyone; it kills nearly everyone.

I finish this emotional and accurate talk and I say, okay, now join me in a movement against horrible, oppressive murderous old age.

Obviously no one joins me…in fact, everyone thinks I am crazy. People rightly realize that to form a movement against the inevitable, against aging is literally insane. And people are aware, as well, that eloquent accurate demonstrations of pain from aging have no bearing on their conclusion to ignore appeals to organize against aging. It is absurd to join a social movement against inevitable facts of life.

What we need to realize, certainly in the U.S.A., but I suspect in most places, is that for the tens of millions of people we need to communicate with – the speeches, talks, rallies, classes, and books that we offer about poverty, indignity, war, sexism, and racism, much less about wage slavery, sound precisely like speeches against aging.

They sound eloquent, they may induce tears and rage, but as to choosing our life path, they are beside the point.