Power beyond supplicant politics: building the “parallel polis”
In the wake of COP26 and the manifest failure of the world’s elites to do anything close to what’s necessary in the face of the climate crisis (not to mention inequality, racial violence, authoritarianism, etc), it seems more important than ever to have not just a coherent theory of change, but a coherent theory of power.
I want to compare three different theories currently vying for supremacy… and offer a fourth.
It’s the institutions… and a willingness to play “politics”
This take, by former Republican operative and Niskanen Center co-founder Jerry Taylor, is situated within the context of U.S. electoral politics. He argues that liberals in America have generally failed to build sustainable political power, despite a platform that is popular with the public. He attributes this to a failure of philanthropy (where the “Right” supports leadership development and long-term institution-building, the “Left’ has not), and to a failure of political savvy (an unwillingness to engage in the difficult but necessary work of getting things done. He concludes:
There is simply no substitute for active, savvy political engagement.
I agree with Jerry’s basic thesis and in particular his critique of “Left” philanthropy, but it’s limited in application given that it relies so heavily on a top-down theory of change (not a lot of scope for the agency-building participatory politics I’m interested in).
It’s about expanding the base; targeting “moderates”
This recent take on the climate movement comes from Alex Evans with the UK’s A Larger Us, expanded in this twitter thread. He argues that we’ve reached the limits of direct organizing/confrontational politics (Extinction Rebellion, Sunrise) and need to more proactively reach out to “moderates” to build a broader coalition. Much of what he shares is best practice in movement building: what john a. powell calls “bridging”, ensuring direct action targets those responsible and capable of responding, etc. But the thrust of the argument is that we need to pay more attention to “moderates” (a category I believe is mythical) and try to woo conservatives toward our vision. I agree with the need (expand the coalition, to some extent a fundamental question about how we approach the “spectrum of allies”, below) and disagree with his proposed approach.
It’s about reaching tipping points, anchoring on the base
3) This rebuttal comes from UK climate activist George Monbiot in the form of a twitter thread. He rejects Alex’s thesis, instead suggesting that we should be focused on movement-building to reach a tipping point, continuing to anchor on the base of those who share our vision (and who are most impacted, looking to the global South) and expanding from there. I think he plays a little fast and loose about how we reach tipping points (a wish is not a strategy, which is partly Alex’s point), but it represents a fundamentally different view of who we “center” in our political imagination. (I summarized some of the research on tipping points in the context of social transformation here, for folks looking to dive in). He seems to implicitly accept the wisdom of the spectrum of allies approach, but proposes to center the base, not those who are neutral or even passively opposed.
Changing systems is about changing power
The art of systems change, as Cyndi Suarez reminds us, is the art of shifting power (this post is my own exploration of how I understand power). What unites the theories of change/power articulated here is an underlying assumption of the permanence of power in its current forms: the strategies are all influence strategies. That is, they are first and foremost about changing what power does… not where it resides. In some cases they want to change who has it… but even those strategies want to replace one “who” with another “who”… keeping power in its current institutional forms.
Taylor’s approach accepts the contours of the political battlefield, and seeks to amass institutional power to work within them. Evans too seems to accept the current structures, but seeks to build a broader base from which to make demands upon those who have power (social, rather than structural). To some extent Monbiot follows the same logic as Evans; their argument seems to be over who you center as you seek to expand your coalition. (I know both Alex and George have more nuanced views than those expressed in these post-COP twitter threads, so if I’m being uncharitable here it’s in service of trying to differentiate among different approaches to power and politics).
The problem with all of these approaches, in my view, is that they buy into a notion of power that is a dead-end: they are a form of what Tim Hollo evocatively calls “supplicant politics.” He explains:
The centralised, dominance-based, adversarialist power structures of our current system, in government, business and civil society, and in the relationships between them, are the heart of the problem. Through them, we can only see power, like everything else in our late-capitalist world, as linear, as transactional, as a zero-sum game. Within this world view, the only option for those seeking social change is to organise as supplicants, to build influence over those in power, or occasionally seek to change who holds this power.
Basically, it’s asking those who have power to do something we want. The limitations of this approach should be obvious; Jason Hickel makes the point clearly:
Power beyond supplicant politics: the “parallel polis”
Hollo’s essay offers the most compelling critique of our current outdated strategies for systems change (“our” being those of us who aspire to social justice, to systems change in support of a world that works for everyone).
But the most compelling strategy I’ve found for the way forward is the concept of the “parallel polis,” an approached coined by Czech dissident Vaclav Benda in the 1970s as a means of surviving and innovating within the totalitarian confines of the Soviet state. Recognizing both the futility and the toxic effect of trying to work within totalitarian structures, the parallel polis is an act of resistance rooted in acts of creation. In a beautiful essay exploring the concept, Anne Focke explains that it requires creating:
All kinds of independent parallel structures — that is, structures unmanipulated by totalitarian power: parallel information networks, cultural and educational institutions.
As I wrote elsewhere, I’m attracted to the deliberate use of the word “parallel” rather than “alternative”; the latter carrying connotations of fringe or marginal, somehow unserious, and thus paradoxically lending credibility to the very thing the alternatives seek to critique.
Mariame Kaba talks about re-centering: instead of saying “alternatives to incarceration” (which inadvertently centers “incarceration” in our imaginations) we need to center on what we are for, what we are building. In the context of abolition, Micah Herskind channels Elizabeth Hinton and Kaba:
Practicing abolition means creating — creating — communities of care… abolition is in the present. We are doing it every single day in multiple kinds of ways. It’s not just a horizon we’ll arrive at some day. It’s constantly being made.
The stakes are high, and they are here. As Hollo reminds us:
If we aren’t actively building the new institutions to replace the old ones, the answer is ready and waiting for us: authoritarianism.
There are countless examples of this already happening, at astonishing scales. The most obvious successes are the mutual aid networks that sprung up in response to the pandemic, in the face of state failure, even in so-called “advanced” nations. To this day those networks are in many cases far more effective at meeting basic human needs (including, importantly, the need for agency, autonomy, and belonging) than existing state or private sector systems. Harsha Walia names a few such innovative efforts here. Rebecca Solnit has long documented this trend, emerging from the deepest wellsprings of what it means to be human; I thought of that again this week watching communities mobilize spontaneously to support those displaced by torrential flooding and mudslides in the Pacific Northwest.
I don’t want to belabor the point, but the idea bears emphasis because it flies in the face of prevailing wisdom governing so much of our movement-building, organizing, and advocacy efforts. The goal cannot only be to get those in power to change behavior; we can’t afford to wait. We must also build parallel structures — dare I say institutions — to meet the needs of this moment, and to welcome people as the dominant systems continue to lose legitimacy.
My favorite example blending these strategies is the vTaiwan work pioneered by the Sunflower movement… continues to inspire me with what is possible in the realm of civic participation and digitial democracy. A different way of imagining power and possibility. We explored some of the nuances around power, politics, and movement-building in this Conversation on Transformation, featuring some of my favorite practitioners (Cyndi Suarez, AnaLouise Keating, Tim Hollo, and Lorella Praeli):
A multiplicity of tactics… a shared theory of power
Of course, at some level I agree with Taylor, Evans, and Monbiot. Yes Taylor is right that we should contend for political power within the confines of the current system: building the parallel polis doesn’t happen overnight, and we have a moral imperative to improve material conditions right here right now. Yes Evans is right that we should intentionally seek to expand our coalition, to find inclusive narratives that can build a “larger us.” And yes Monbiot is right that we should rightly center those most impacted by our current crises in identifying solutions adequate to the moment. As Hollo aptly put it:
There’s no time left not to do everything.
But. And this is a big but. While all these tactics may help move us toward the world we desire, not all of them can get us there. I’ve written recently about the “three horizons” framework, and the difficult work of determining whether a given intervention is moving us from horizon 1 (status quo) to horizon 3 (the future we long for). How do we know whether our horizon 2 interventions (the bridges) are actually leading in the right direction?
This to me is the value of work, organizing, and movement-building that has intrinsic value , that is creating in every moment the culture we want and the world we long for, at the micro-scale. It’s about how we relate to each other, AS we are building the parallel polis, contending for institutional power, defending ourselves from the predations of oppressive systems. As Gloria Anzaldúa reminds us:
There are no bridges. We make the bridges by walking.
Anyway, I intended for this to be a quick blog reflection, so I’ll stop here. I want to close with this line I first heard via Ted Kolderie:
Politics is not the art of the possible. Politics is the art of making possible what is necessary.
Let’s get to it.
