Loving Heroes

An extended essay on the theme of solidarity and psychoanalysis was published in David Morgan’s A Deeper Cut: Further explorations of the unconscious in social and political life.       

This weekend I was waiting by the phone for six hours like a love struck puppy. I had tracked down a key activist in Hong Kong who is organising democratic trade unions in China. A fierce radical woman, what’s not to love? Hour five of missed calls and sharp email exchanges and I’m getting the feeling she’s-just-not-that-into-me. She calls me from a lift at 11pm and it starts badly. She’s refusing to talk about the topic of the interview, and wants to know my left-wing credentials.

In this type of situation I pull out the big guns, the things that normally send HRM and single men running for the hills. Organizing in the diamond mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo and negotiating human rights in the Transcaucasus. Credentials. Tick.

There then proceeds to be twenty minutes of inspired and wise stuff on what it takes to build democracy in Hong Kong and China. I fall for this woman, her sharp analysis of the human condition and the large personal sacrifices that her engagement entails. There’s a kind of begrudging love between activists, a shared idea of solidarity or the agape of ‘brotherly love’. This love is close to the Greek word philia, a friendly love but with a generous pinch of the caring familial love of storge and passionate Eros. Solidarity is a central organizing principle for activism, involving both the principle of common action with others and the identification of one’s own interests with theirs.

This model of cooperation can be deepened using psychoanalytic formulations of cohesion in groups, established through identification and a focus on group tasks. For members of trade unions, this involves the commitment to support other members in response to conflicts with employers, a concrete task as well as a political one. Solidarity can be conceived in two contrasting senses: first, as a normative or moral principle which creates an obligation to support other people in case of need; second, as a form of ‘enlightened self-interest’ with only weak ethical underpinning, motivated by the belief that an injury to one is an injury to all. We often move between these two different modalities, but as our economic and political crises deepen there is always an overwhelming pressure to deliver mutual and concrete outputs.

This is often a source of enormous frustration for activists involved in clinical or therapeutic work, finding psychoanalysis a bit slippery on the subject of change. Although many activists make powerful parallels between the emancipatory projects of Marx and Freud, the workings of psychoanalysis are often frustratingly slow and small, a long way from the grandiose ambitions of social justice and cyber campaigning.

The way that organising is done is also the source of loving bonds between activists. Late night chats and small group discussions where people ask each other what they think and actually listen to the answers. Good organisers seduce people into a powerful sense of belonging, where we can generalize about our connectedness and be part of a bigger picture.

For many people joining a trade union offers this sense of belonging, a workplace equivalent of secure attachment and the primary basis for surviving work. Although left wing circles can bring out our internal Mother Teresa, there’s a lot of sex happening at rallies and Living Marixism conferences. Eros enlists deep commitment.

Acts of solidarity can also build what Turquet calls ‘oneness’ - a strange almost cellular connection between people. Something like the Greek idea of storge, the begrudging love you have for a younger sibling who irritates and inspires at exactly the same time. Locked together in a ‘union’ against a common enemy, whether its parents, austerity or multinational corporations. In this sense activism is prone to paranoia, where “fear simplifies the emotional situation” (Winnicott, Thoughts on the Meaning of the Word Democracy, 1950). A gang like state pitted against the tribe of men in royal blue suits.

This familial love is essential for understanding the pressures activists put each other under, which from the outside look like the stuff of abusive relationships. Late night demands for a sacrificial offer and relentless calls on free time and emotional energy for the greater good. On the surface ideologically compelled but also driven by a vicious internal voice that demands we sacrifice everything to save the world. Activists often have superegos like tanks making us vulnerable to overwork, building crescendos of resentment and burnout. The internal bully that propels us towards yet another categorical imperative when our precious hearts are screaming “mate, it is your spiritual duty to stay on the sofa eating crisps”.

And so it was with no surprise whatsoever that ten minutes before the end of the interview this heroic creature demands that I drop my complicity with the neo-liberal-academy and immediately go to China to research the organising methods of autonomous Chinese activists. An attempt to squirrel up all the energy and love in our exchange for the cause. Ten minutes of how the entire world’s precious experience leads us to one, and only one conclusion about how the world should be organized. A sudden shift away from love between equals, philia, to the bossy older sister love of storge.

Whatever our politics, love and its absence is always involved. Despite the frustrations, a politics based on love is required because it’s in this mix between us that the revolution happens. The rest is just being able to live with yourself.

This blog was originally published in Love: A Guide for Amateurs