Increasing amounts of us want to live in a different world, one where our lives aren't ruled by the demands of an increasingly unequal and unstable economic model. Yet the nature of the system creates a myriad of obstacles towards us taking action to bring about revolution. Breaking through the ubiquitous pro-bourgeois propaganda, finding an organization that's trustworthy and genuinely represents revolutionary goals, and making the moves that best advance the cause of proletarian revolution are arduous goals in a society that's designed to keep you politically demobilized and emotionally deficient. The enormity of your task as a revolutionary is compounded by the madness that you constantly have to navigate while existing in this system.
Despite this, the pathologies that late-stage capitalism imposes upon us can be used as a driving force for our mission of enacting change, as a type of insanity that can be channeled towards making us tenacious. Our pain can be weaponized.
Here's how I've been able to do this. As someone whose goal is to overthrow the capitalist state and replace it with a proletarian democracy, my worldview is oriented around the Marxist-Leninist philosophy of dialectical materialism. This means that when I see an injustice, or experience a negative emotion as a result of the way that society is ordered, I apply dialectical materialism's view that history's problems result from a set of contradictions. Marxism-Leninism helps remind me that every obstacle the system throws at me has an explainable source, that the events around me have cause and effect.
If the events behind our pain have cause and effect, they can be overcome by applying this sense of deeper understanding to the forces which impact our daily lives. We don't deserve the poverty and turmoil and exhaustion that characterize neoliberal capitalist society; these things come from the way the system is set up. And if they come from the system, we aren't damned to them-with the right moves, we can put an end to them. The intellectual understanding of this reality is what makes someone who commits to the Marxist-Leninist cause.
An intellectual grasp is only part of it though. In order to keep ourselves intact throughout our quest of revolution, we'll also need to gain an emotional hold over our situation. The philosophy that I think best fits this task is Stoicism. Stoicism has remarkable similarities to the rational, scientifically based worldview that Marxism-Leninism puts forth; it asks us to respond to suffering and injustice not by concluding that the world is an irredeemable place and that our lives are meaningless, but by rationally assessing the circumstances and finding the course if action that can best bring them towards justice.
This approach to handling suffering and injustice, which Stoics call "Stoic indifference," is not about suppressing necessary negative emotions or being cold towards the misery of others. It's about defeating neuroticism, which is the pathology that's sure to send us into a mental hell when we're in a hostile environment like late-stage capitalism. Neuroticism tempts us into thinking that we're worthless, that the darkness of our world is insurmountable, that anxiety and depression are the only emotions we can possibly feel in response to our surroundings. The ideas put forth by Stoicism affirm that none of this is true.
My control over the political events around me is very limited at the moment, but I've realized I have much more control over how much neuroticism can define how I think. If I conquer the irrational impulses that seek to make me tear myself apart in reaction to the state of the world, I won't lose my mind during my struggle for revolution. If my mind can't be broken, neither will my focus on advancing the revolutionary cause. The fear and the distractions will be minimized to the fullest extent. I'll never lose the belief that I have a purpose.
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