I am writing this piece with exhaustion but also a deep feeling of success, and for the first time in a while (and probably my entire time as an active organizer), I feel good(as opposed to incredibly anxious) about taking a short break(three days in which I am still developing strategic analysis and doing small tasks). It’s intertwined with some bitterness, an underappreciation(but not unappreciation) for the labor and strategic precision, spiraling anxiety and loneliness, and the sacrifice of a more stable life that is defined by non-confrontation. However, I plan to temporarily resolve this bitterness through a weekend trip that involves a deep reflection on our current moment, seeing some close comrades who live relatively far, and doing actions that will not have a large effect on my fragile stability.
I originally tried to write this piece two days ago, but I couldn’t finish it because I didn’t have the answer. I had a few points that made sense, but ultimately, I wanted my conclusion to be that taking breaks is an inherent trade-off with revolution but necessary nonetheless. This analysis was scientific, but not powered by love. It was powered by bitterness of unfair divisions of labor and feelings of deep isolation, and it did not encapsulate the very real and important work that I have done. My new analysis is still scientific, and now powered by love, specifically a revolutionary self-love that is both necessary to my well-being and a revolutionary self-love that I have earned.
I want to start with my original thesis: rest is not revolutionary. Rest is a necessity. Eating is a necessity, housing is a necessity, having friends is a necessity. Capitalism, through its natural increase of the exploitation of the working class, limits these necessities for the majority of people, hence the demand for “each according to their own need”. To chase these things is the baseline of being human, but it is not revolutionary. Revolution is a very clearly defined action: a violent destruction of the bourgeois state. The need for the replacement of the bourgeois state, and the need for the withering of class, is what necessitates revolution. The goal of revolution is to guarantee necessities for all of humankind, from food to rest to joy, but to chase those necessities without centering revolution is, at best, foolish, and at worst, individualistic.
Of course, this (objectively correct) theory of revolution is understood by all Marxist-Leninists. When people decry that movement work is toxic, we must approach their concerns with a concrete analysis that is founded in care, even if they are incredibly annoying. Revolutionary work is difficult, and it brings out uncomfortable conversations and violent repression. That is not a reason to stop revolutionary work, for most of these uncomfortable conversations bring about criticisms for us to self-improve, and the violent repression is a sign of real material change being made. However, criticisms can also be unnecessarily hurtful, and the material change we win may not be worth the consequences we face.
Specifically for the idea of rest, many unscientific ideologies and non-ideologies view it as a necessity for revolution because it is revolution. However, rest is a necessity for revolution because it is a necessity for living, and we cannot be revolutionaries without being alive. Furthermore, we must clearly define what rest is, because it is not a binary concept, for even when we are in a state of not taking action, we are still absorbing and analyzing the world around us.
Sometimes, we have to work beyond our usual threshold to make things work. There is an element of sacrifice in revolutionary work that, a lot of the time, we don’t get the choice to make. The repression of last spring did not allow for much rest, with the original national response for Mahmoud Khalil’s kidnapping, and then the more regional and intense(given my current location) response to Rumeysa Ozturk’s detention, and then the visa revocations on my own campus, and then an incredibly targeted and brutal doxxing campaign against myself. If I were to have taken a break, the movement on my campus would have been different, for all of my work is meaningful and impactful. And it did come at a cost to my well-being and sanity, but I don’t regret it. When we take pride in our work, we recognize the necessity of it, and thus we have a stronger obligation to our revolutionary work, which pushes us into doing more work that further heightens the contradictions.
But just as there are guaranteed periods in which we are losing, there are also guaranteed periods in which we are winning. Winning can be defined as whether the movement is on the offensive or the defensive, which can be defined individually, locally, or nationally. I am individually on the offensive when I am in unity with my comrades, and they can pick up the work that I have left off. This can happen when an organization is on the defensive, but all its members are ready to face the repression head on. On the contrary, when I am individually on the defensive, and thus in struggle with my comrades, but my organization is on the offensive, a strategic step back would not cause crippling effects. In this current moment, my organization is coming off a powerful win, even if nationally, it feels like our movement is on the defensive. Thus, while I am fueled by the grief of the state of our world and my anger at the failure of the American Palestine solidarity movement, I am also assuaged that my organization has done its part, and that, in the short term, I no longer have to do the pressing tasks that made this win happen.
If my organization can plan an action without me, I have done my diligence in sharing my skills and thus can take a step back to focus on my own theoretical development or switch to making instagram infographics or to think about how to do better actions in a more distant future. (I can also use some of that time to have more fun.) Organizing tasks are relational and are not all encompassing. We say that we are burnt-out, but perhaps we must start asking ourselves and our organizations, what are we burnt-out from? Because the movement does need us, as individuals, as organizations, and as coalitions, but different moments will have different asks from different individuals, different organizations, and different coalitions.
To love our work is to see its necessity, so we must strategically determine where our energies should go so that it can be sustainable. A form of unsustainable organizing is one that prioritizes feelings over necessity, and thus nothing happens because no one wants to do the hard work. Another form of unsustainable organizing is one that prioritizes necessity over feelings, because when our feelings are smothered, we lose the love that powers this revolution. But this balance does not exist in stability; sometimes we have to prioritize comfort over revolution, and sometimes we have to prioritize revolution over comfort.
For me, I tend towards prioritizing revolution over comfort. The best piece of advice I have received is that organizational contradictions tend to resolve themselves. Because all contradictions resolve themselves, including the fundamental contradictions of capitalism and imperialism. Our role as revolutionaries is to heighten those contradictions, but liberation is inevitable, not because of idealistic hope, but because of the natural progression of class struggle. And our role as revolutionaries is to also resolve our own contradictions, to let go of our reactionary tendencies to better ourselves and the world.
Most importantly, in the context of taking a break, our role as revolutionaries in an organization is to resolve organizational contradictions, which are the gaps in knowledge of how to do revolution. We learn from theory or practice, and most practical knowledge is learned from failure. In the context of revolutionary work, these failures are often painful, so it is thus best to learn from the years of theory of our predecessors and our comrades. But sometimes, it is okay to let our comrades learn from practice, and I have set my boundaries with this by determining whether or not their mistakes would be detrimental to themselves and our organization. A rally that doesn’t have signs and flyers is much different than a rally without a safety team. I would refuse rest if it meant keeping my comrades safe, but I would not refuse necessary rest to make an instagram post look perfect.
So to answer the question of how to take a break, we must spend some energy to analyze our situation. Will my tiredness affect the quality of my work to a detrimental effect? Is the movement in an incredibly defensive position? In understanding that my break will come at a cost, not to the revolution itself but rather the speed at which the revolution happens, is it worth the extra toil to keep my comrades well? The second set of questions to ask relates to the nature of the break. How long do I need a break for? What specifically do I need a break from? And what would nurture me during this break so that I can come back better?
And like any scientific approach, we learn how to take better breaks the more we do them. Sometimes, our breaks will be detrimental because someone made a fatal mistake that we could have corrected, but that does not mean breaks are inherently counter-revolutionary. Sometimes, our breaks won’t nurture us because we took a step too far back. But most of the time, our breaks will teach us more about ourselves, our organization, and our movement, because we must approach ourselves, our organizations, and our movements with love.