complicity, reform, etc
“If there’s a fire you’re trying to douse, you can’t put it out from inside the house.”
“I’m in the cabinet, I am complicit […]” — Washington On Your Side (Hamilton)
This metaphor suggests that you can’t solve injustice whilst remaining a part of the system causing it. It encourages direct action and revolutionary change over incremental reform.
- Inclusion of this principle here doesn’t necessarily indicate that I whole-heartedly agree
- It is likely to apply on a case by case basis
- Assuming this did apply, I believe it applies to those with power in the system or a real, practical option to abstain.
- eg a fascist organisation won’t become anti-fascist from within and it is likely that members have other options
- but citizens in a capitalist nation without substantial capital can almost never opt out
- this does not mean ‘buying iphone means supporting capitalism’, ‘ok don’t buy food then’ or similar inane retorts common on the internet
- this leads to the interesting cases of middle management, small business and small landlords - each individual has their own view of how much power they hold, and their own yardstick for what it is to be complicit in harmful systems
- and many will cross their own hypothetical boundaries for higher levels of comfort
- I’m not passing judgement on individuals here, just commenting on the tendency to reach for comfort of varying amounts, the diversity of ability/willingness to stand by values, the cognitive dissonance of having to live under capitalism as a leftist, and the strange combination of power and powerlessness faced by working class people pushed into individualism