Barbara Ehrenreich Has Some Advice for Young Leftists

I first read Barbara Ehrenreich in college, when a friend sent me the essay “Not So Pretty in Pink.” In it, Ehrenreich argued that the radical women’s health movement had been supplanted by the comparatively anodyne “pink-ribbon breast cancer cult.” Most thrillingly, she called bullshit on the precise sort of thing I thought you weren’t supposed to call bullshit on publicly. I became an instant fan.

Ehrenreich’s work is appealing for its fiery focus on social injustice—her most popular book is the best-selling Nickel and Dimed, for which she went full gonzo to report on the unsustainability of low-wage work in America—but beyond that, she is a generalist. This reach lends itself well to her new essay collection, Had I Known, out March 24. Many of the pieces included in the book are striking for their foresight: Take her essay on the “new man” who is occupied with telegraphing sensitivity and buying nice clothing, or the one on Ehrenreich’s friends getting sucked into “the cult of busyness,” both of which were written in the early eighties. (As for her 2007 piece on the exorbitant wealth gap between CEOs and employees, we all know how that’s turned out.) The collection is also a reminder that Ehrenreich’s writing is just plain fun to read, thanks to her acerbic wit and spirited grumpiness.

Ehrenreich is 78 now and frailer than she used to be. When we met at her Alexandria, Virginia, apartment one afternoon in late February, she was nursing a broken arm that required a home health aide to move in. But the drollness was all still there. “I suppose you’ll want to know who my interior decorator is,” she deadpanned, when I asked for a tour of her sparsely done-up living space.

Her walls are mostly adorned with gifts her journalist son, Ben Ehrenreich, picked up during his international travels, including a framed charcoal print of a 1920s German antiwar poster that reads, “Nie Wieder Krieg,” or “Never Again War.” An overflowing bookcase, strewn with various knickknacks and family photos, also contains—almost like an afterthought—an Emmy. She won it for Jackson, a documentary on Mississippi’s last abortion clinic produced by the Economic Reporting Hardship Project, an organization she founded to help get marginalized writers published. “I feel like a total fake with that,” she joked when I asked her about the statue. “Only thing I’ve ever won that impressed my granddaughter.”

We talked twice. In our initial conversation at her home, we discussed her new book, her long writing career, and what it was like to experience the current political moment as a long-time socialist: At the time, Bernie Sanders was the front-runner for the Democratic nomination. In a brief follow-up call last week, we discussed how everything has changed drastically since then.

GQ: Why was now the right time for this collection? And how did you go about selecting which essays would go inside?

Barbara Ehrenreich: Well, I don’t know if I should answer honestly. But the honest answer is it wasn’t my idea. It was my publisher’s idea. I guess they figured they should do this while I’m still alive. But I did not feel like it was that interesting. There certainly are a lot of new articles and columns and stuff in it, but it’s all familiar to me, so it’s not interesting.

You take some pokes at the GQ of the time in your New Man essay. And it was funny to me because, on one hand, there’s some timelessness in that piece. But you also wrote, “A new man, like a new sexuality or a new conservatism, is more likely to turn out to be a journalistic artifact than a cultural sea change.” Do you think that holds true?

Well, I think it was one that was long coming, which was the embrace of men by the consumer culture. That is somewhat recent. But it had nothing to do with the social movements of the sixties in any direct way that I could think of. Before then, there was a time when women shopped for their husbands. Bought them clothes and stuff because it wasn’t masculine to be seen in stores, fussing over fabric and stuff, and men soon caught on to all of that. Now, I understand, there are more and more men wearing makeup.

The men I work with are definitely more fashionable than I am.

That piece was criticized by a gay friend, because he said I should’ve emphasized the role of gay culture and gay liberation in effecting these changes in heterosexual men too. And he’s right.

When you looked through your old work, did you find that any of your viewpoints had changed significantly over the years?

Hmmm. I don’t think so. Sounds like I’m pretty inflexible and rigid, but nothing comes to mind. Or maybe it was so off the grid that I just didn’t even think of including it.

What’s an example of something that would be so “off-the-grid”?

Now, actually, having said that, I managed to get a lot of things in the book that don’t really fit in, in a way. There are a lot of political things and a lot of things about what you’d expect of a sociologically oriented commentator. But there’s also a bunch of weird stuff, like about humans and animals. And that was just fun. I do more and more things like that, that maybe don’t have a big political axe to grind, but where I’m trying to understand something. I’m trying to solve some sort of problem, whether or not it has anything to do with anything anyone’s currently discussing.

What’s your daily routine like these days?

Everything has been screwed up by this. [Gestures to broken arm.] I spend a lot of time doing research and reading. Googling! Let’s be honest. I tend to do the actual writing in the morning and then more research-y things later in the day. I try to put things together in some sort of outline. Then I look at it the next day and think “oh, this is awful.”

What are you researching now? I see a couple books on this table about Freud and Jung.

I’m working on a book about narcissism. Guess why? It’s not just about Trump, but about how this became such a prominent characteristic about our species in relatively recent times. I’m interested, for example, in the narcissism of kings, heads of state. What I think is sort of unique about our modern, American style culture is that now everybody—not just kings and noblemen—can be a narcissist and act like one or dress like one. It’s been democratized. There are many kinds of measures, and there are claims—and I don’t know how to evaluate them—mathematically, statistically that there is an increase in behavior we’d consider embarrassingly narcissistic a hundred years ago.

Do you ever experience writer’s block? What form does that take?

Yes. When you’ve been writing all day and you realize you get like 400 words out of it. And I always say to myself that the problem is there’s probably something I’m not facing. Some question. And I have to identify that and answer that. And usually there is something I’m dodging.

Do you mean personally or within the work itself?

It’s almost the same. There’s something I’m not looking at because it goes against my original assumptions. Or because I just don’t know enough.

Is there anything in your old writing that you’ve ever felt embarrassed by years later?

I’ve often felt that way about the book Living With a Wild God. Because it’s so personal and so self-exposing and I wondered if I should be doing this.

You write within the frame of a certain ideology, but you are a generalist, more so than many other writers. How do you know when a topic has interested you enough to pursue a whole book about it?

Books for me are driven by two different things: one is anger, outrage, usually at injustice of some kind. And then the other thing they’re driven by is curiosity. I can get so fascinated by a particular problem and I can’t stop. I did something which will probably be a piece, or even a chapter in the book I’m supposedly working on now. It was about Paleolithic cave art. I couldn’t stop. I just became utterly fascinated and realized I had to keep going.

You said you’re inspired when something makes you angry. How does that manifest itself and how do you use your anger?

For me, the best “use” of it is through humor. Humor contains a lot of aggression. That’s one good way to let the anger and aggression out, and it’s always been a source of inspiration to me.

A constant argument in journalism concerns how much of a separation should exist between activism and journalism. What are your thoughts on people who believe there should be a stark line between the two?

There are people who think it’s virtually impossible to be both, because how could you be a good journalist if you also had opinions, if you had feelings, about the issues. I can’t imagine doing it otherwise.

Right now is a very exciting time politically. As of this conversation, Bernie Sanders is the frontrunner in the polls. But how much of an emphasis do you think the left should be putting on electoral politics?

I don’t think I have one absolute answer for all circumstances. I have generally veered away from an extreme focus on elections. In the eighties, when I was a member of DSA, there weren’t many of us then.

I saw your tweet about being one of the original 1,300 socialists.

“It doesn’t really matter who we endorse for President,” I was saying to these 1,300 other socialists, “because we’re nothing.” Let’s think of something we can do that might make a difference, and our endorsement doesn’t. Now, that may not be so true. Certainly people I know were very pleased when DSA endorsed Sanders. I try not to get into arguments with people who are supporting other Democrats ... I’m sure they have their reasons.

Are you involved with DSA at all anymore?

Not literally.

They got rid of all the honorary co-chairs a couple years ago, right?

Yeah. When Michael Harrington died and they were left with only one co-chair, which was me, they abolished co-chairs. [Laughing.]

Were there any hurt feelings over that?

Not on my part. I had gotten the message already.

How are you feeling in this current political moment, going into Super Tuesday? Obviously between when we’re speaking and when this interview is published we may have a very different idea of where this primary is going but … did you ever think you would see a Democratic Socialist frontrunner for President?

Heavens no. The first time I voted for Bernie in 2016, I felt this feeling of uplift. I’d never expected to have that feeling in a voting booth. It’s like “wooo, what have I just done? Look! I voted for a socialist!” It was pretty wonderful. Maybe it’ll get normal.

If Sanders gets the nomination and then loses the general, how much do you think it would set the left back?

It would be a real blow but it’s one we need to be prepared for. I just hope people will have the historical memory to realize that the left has gone up and down and up and down for generations. And be prepared for that. Nobody ever said this is something that’s going to be done before you’re 35.

Did you ever expect to see this resurgence of socialism in your lifetime?

No. I mean, I don’t go around being optimistic or pessimistic. I’m against both of those things: optimism and pessimism. It’s silly to say “I’m an optimist” or the opposite. The point is to try to understand, make sense of the situation we’re in, so we can deal with similar things better next time. It’s a matter of getting to: What’s the reality of this situation? What can be done? And not just saying “it’ll work out alright” or “it won’t because people are just too fucked up.”

If you could give one piece of advice to young leftists, what would it be?

Don’t forget to have a good time while you’re doing things. Political work should not be work. It should also be pleasurable, sociable, fun. And if we can’t create organizations and enterprises and cultures like that, we’re not going to succeed. If the left just seems to be a big scold, as in certain hyper-PC manifestations of it, it’s not going to attract people. Unfortunately, tragically a lot of white people think that if they encounter a leftist, it’s going to mean that they’re denounced for racism. Well, maybe they should be, at some level, denounced for racism. But we’re not going to grow that way. Nobody says “you’re right, I will now join DSA.” We have to provide more attractive places to be, socially and collegially.

There’s that anecdote of yours about bringing a union leader to a meeting, and an adjunct professor criticized him for being a white man.

This happened. I had set up a workshop at a national leftwing conference and I invited people I knew from Fort Wayne, Indiana, who were workers. And so I have friends there who are involved with all this. Got them to come to the big conference, where they were treated contemptuously, I would say, by a woman who was an adjunct professor or something like that. I mean, poor thing. Who wants to be an adjunct professor? But it was her failure to recognize that the people she was talking to were not just “white men” as she had described them—and they weren’t just white, actually, they were also black—but she didn’t really notice that. It was contemptuous. I mean, clearly, there was kind of a difference, which you or I might be sensitive to—little cues of how people dress that gives them away. And clearly she did not realize that this was part of the white working class and listen to them. Learn from them. Hear what they’re going through. Don’t just say “uhf, white men.”

There is also a tendency among some to look at the working class as a “them” instead of part of the same movement.

Oh yeah, in 2016 after Trump won, suddenly I was very popular with media people saying things like “Oh, you’ve written about the working class, is this what it’s like? What do we know about it now? Who are these people?” And I thought, “You’re calling me? A retired old lady in a nice building in Alexandria, Virginia?” There’s a huge alienation, there’s a huge divide—usually between the people who make media decisions, which includes you to an extent, and the other people.

Besides that example we talked about, what are some ways in which you think the left has been alienating?

Well there are certain expectations about the working class that you get very often from PMC [professional managerial class] people who would never cop to being prejudiced. But an expectation that if you’re not college-educated, you’re not very articulate. There are so many ways we could draw these lines without realizing that is class prejudice. I remember once pitching a story to the editor of a very liberal magazine. It had to do with working class men. And why don’t more professional women consider them as mates—look at the FedEx guy, look at everybody. The editor was listening to this and said, “Well, can they talk?” And I just felt crushed, stabbed. ‘Cause that was straight up classism that I could feel personally. We need to become aware of those things as much of us try to be aware of racism and just check it before it comes out.

What sort of failures would have to take place for Trump to get elected again?

Oh so many of them. Anything could happen. What I’m worried about right now is that Trump might not win and not step down.

Do you think that could really be possible?

Well, look at the fact that he has said there would be civil war if he lost the election. Well, what’s that if not a call for a civil war? Which I’m not looking forward to because we’re vastly outgunned. The possibilities here are so wide open and so terrifying, I’d rather not think about them. No, we do need to think about them. If Trump decided to, like Hitler, mobilize the power of military forces that already exist, we’re not prepared.

I want to talk about your Marie Kondo tweets from last year. [Ehrenreich tweeted: “I will be convinced that America is not in decline only when our de-cluttering guru Marie Kondo learns to speak English.” After a huge amount of blowback, in which she was called racist, she deleted it and posted: “I confess: I hate Marie Kondo because, aesthetically speaking, I’m on the side of clutter. As for her language: It’s OK with me that she doesn’t speak English to her huge American audience but it does suggest that America is in decline as a superpower.”] What was that like emotionally for you?

It was devastating. I had done a stupid thing. I found there was no way to apologize, because any apology would ignite a new wave of criticism, so I just left Twitter alone for a while and then gradually slid back in.

Did you imagine it would ever become a news story?

Oh, heavens no. It seemed odd but I didn’t know what to do or what to think. It was my son who got me signed on to Twitter because I had to tweet for the Economic Hardship Reporting Project so I had an institutional sort of basis for what I was doing. When my son was getting me signed on he said, “I think I’ve just ruined your life, mom.” I said “you’re right,” later.

Would you have done it differently?

Oh yes. It was a stupid thing to have said. Or stupidly put.

You’re no stranger to criticism. A friend recently reminded me of when, in 1998, Judith Butler and Joseph Buttigieg [Pete Buttigieg’s father] pulled together a conference to take you down for your “left conservatism.”

Oh yeah. But I don’t remember much about it. Just being “what!”

You recently tweeted about experiencing ageism. In what ways has that happened?

You know, Twitter is a good source. I’m surprised by how many people who are critical of something I’ve posted will fold that up with something about age or not being pretty enough or not being pretty anymore.

What do you want your legacy to be?

I don’t want a legacy. I’m serious! Other people will keep doing the things I’m working on and that’s great. The people I work with on the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, that’s kind of a legacy. My kids, of course, who are perfect.

You don’t believe in optimism and pessimism. You certainly don’t believe in positive thinking. When you’re doing political work, how do you stay hopeful? I don’t want to say … ?

Hopeful is just as bad.

Encouraged? Motivated?

I think the proper frame of mind should be “determined.” I don’t know if what I’m doing will really help, but I’m determined to try and see how it goes. But that’s different. That’s not saying, I’m going to do this because God is on my side, or something. But I’m saying I’m going to die trying.

Since Ehrenreich and I first talked, the political situation—not to mention the general state of the world—looks entirely different. After an early surge for Bernie Sanders, the rest of his Democratic competitors dropped out and endorsed Biden, allowing the vice president to take a lead in the polls and become the presumptive nominee. The COVID-19 pandemic is rapidly spreading through America, all while it becomes frighteningly clear that our healthcare system doesn’t have the resources to sustain the impact. So I called her up at her house on Friday to get her take. “Right now, I sure wish we had Bernie facing this,” she said. “Or almost anybody.”

How are you doing, staying safe?

I think so. I do go out sometimes but mostly not. I’m old and not supposed to be walking around and interacting with people.

When did you realize that COVID-19 had hit America and was serious?

For me, it was when I could no longer see cars on the highway at eight in the morning from the window of my apartment building, which is usually jammed with people getting to work. Not anymore. That was a signal to me. It just gets worse. I have to say in my case, there’s a special alarm because my son and his wife and child are in Spain and nobody can go into Spain or out of Spain at this point. So that’s pretty scary, it’s hard for the family.

When we talked last time, you mentioned to me that you were mildly concerned that, in November, Trump would refuse to vacate the office if he lost. And at the time, I thought that might have been overblown. Now, I’m concerned about the possibility of suspending elections. Do you have any thoughts about that?

Well, it’s something to worry about. And this sort of messing around with what primaries will occur and so on suggests that that is a possibility.

Your background is in biology. You’ve spent years advocating for socialist policies. Here, we’re seeing the two intersect as the current crisis shows the holes in the medical system. Can you talk more about that?

It’s all coming home to roost, so to speak. We don’t have ways to get tested. We don’t have hospital beds to take care of them if they test positive. The whole thing is revealed as a very, very clumsy and inadequate structure. If we had a more proactive government we would be doing the kind of thing that Spain has just done, which is to say that private healthcare must be folded now into the public system so that there’s one system. You can make policy changes that affect everybody. We can’t do that.

There are two very different ways we could go right now. On one hand, the virus and the economic collapse could usher in an era of even worse authoritarianism. On the other, it could be the wakeup call we need to completely overhaul the system. Where do you think we’re leaning as of now?

That’s up to us. Right now, it’s hard to say. We appear to have no effective national government. It’s impossible to decode the various signals from Washington because they have no idea what they’re doing. But you’re right, it could be that this takes us into a far more authoritarian direction, where the exclusion of foreign nationals becomes routine, it doesn’t need any justification anymore. I have no prediction on this. The tragedy to me is that now we find out that Bernie’s Medicare for All policy was probably the best way to go.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Comfort food, horror newcomers, sequels, and more—settle in for a good weekend.

Originally Appeared on GQ