How the Politics of Powerlessness Prevents Real Change

We are living in a time of massive upheaval, of grave crisis and also enormous opportunity. The world is transforming at a breakneck pace and will continue to change dramatically in our lifetime. The question is only in which directions, in what ways, in whose interests.

If we want life on this planet to become more just, more free, more equal, if we want all people to live full, safe, dignified lives; if we want an economy and political system that work for the many and not just the few; if we want to undo the core systems of white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism that make up empire and shape the values and institutions that govern our lives, we will need movements. There is no path toward the world we all deserve without massive numbers of people taking serious, steady, long-term action in organizations, in the streets, in their neighborhoods, in their workplaces; contesting for power there, in the economy, at all levels of government. We will need to build movements capable of wresting power from a small handful of elites so that the many can use it to build systems that meet people’s needs rather than make profit; that make the planet healthy and livable; that unlock all the human potential stolen by empire and buried under the wreckage it has left in its wake.

Many of us have come to accept our powerlessness, grown accustomed to it in our movements, come to expect it for the future, become attached to it.

This is no small task, obviously. We face an opponent that is perhaps more powerful than in any other time in human history: a billionaire class that makes pharaohs and caesars look like peasants, a political system that is both sophisticated in its control and more than happy to use the oldest types of violence whenever necessary. We face all of this on a planet that is warming catastrophically, faster than most of us can really fathom. For those of us who are opposed to this order and the future it promises, these conditions are things we don’t control, at least not outright. But we do control how we face them, what we do about them. We do control how we fight, how we build our movements. And if we are honest, our movements, and the different kinds of groups and organizations that make them up, are not in the shape they must be in if we hope to stand a chance. We have nowhere near the kind of power we need, and we have a lot of work to do if we hope to get it.

And so here is the hard truth: Part of the reason we are losing is that we are often, in our movements, deeply ambivalent about power. In the little corners where we harbor secrets that we don’t quite know how to speak about, many of us have come to accept our powerlessness, grown accustomed to it in our movements, come to expect it for the future, become attached to it. Many of us have gotten used to being on the margins; taken up the behaviors and ideas that thrive there; gravitated toward the small pleasures of being right and being with people just like us over the danger and sacrifice of striving for something bigger; found safety in battles over the little things we can control in the face of a world so out of our control. We’ve created, perhaps even without knowing it, a set of ideas and behaviors that satisfy these inclinations, a politics of powerlessness. Maybe we’ve even come to like it this way.

I know the texture of this smallness because I too have liked my powerlessness at different times in my life. I have chosen the small wars and small groups and small pleasures over the big ones many times, made peace with life on the margins, even relished it at times. I have, more often than I like to admit, shrunk in fear of the task before us and let despair wrap its cold arms around me. I have been swallowed by my inability to change the world, rested comfortably in thin ideas that protected me from depth and challenge, adopted rules and maintained boundaries that ensured smallness, narrowed the capacity of my heart so as to avoid its breaking. I have exhibited all the tendencies that groups struggling with their powerlessness do: an ambivalence about leadership and rank; a version of identity politics that is reductive and painful to everyone involved; a type of belonging that keeps us small and separate, that keeps people out of our movements rather than inviting them in; a way of wielding love and care that is marked by scarcity; a conflict avoidance and dishonesty inside our organizations that allows these kinds of tendencies to thrive and prevents good strategy. I have seen all this in my peers, even in my heroes, and certainly I have seen it in what we have produced: in groups and movements that are often smaller, weaker, and more insular than we want to admit. These politics come from somewhere truly and deeply understandable, meet a genuine need, and answer real questions. But they are blocking the big dreams we have and the grand project we have taken up to change the world. We are getting in our own way.

The politics of powerlessness is a set of ideas and behaviors based on an ambivalence toward power. It can show up as a propensity to attack leaders or pretend we don’t have any instead of a deep reverence for the craft of leadership and the structure it requires; a way of relating to identity as fixed and static and focused on individual behavior rather than one that is systemic and disciplined and aimed at transformation in us and the world around us; a type of belonging that is more about keeping things enclosed and safe and comfortable rather than one that is geared toward growth both individual and collective. It is made possible by dishonesty and conflict avoidance, which make it hard to craft good strategy and build healthy groups. It is often driven by fear and despair, which incentivize turning inward toward each other and prioritizing performing our radicalism over turning outward and taking effective action to win the world we’re after. It is reinforced by ideas that are easy to reach for even if they are thin, and by habit and routine. It goes hand in hand with an instinct to turn away from the brokenness in each other rather than a commitment to turn toward one another whenever at all possible.

Even with our very real limitations as tiny human beings, with the heartbreak of this, with the real violence of the systems we hope to tear down, with the uncertainty, there is still choice.

All of these patterns come from somewhere deeply understandable. If they are driven in part by fear and despair, that is because fear and despair are reasonable reactions to this world and the struggle to change it. If they are held up by conflict avoidance, that is because conflict is difficult and can tear our groups apart, because being honest about our problems will be exploited by our enemies, because we are woefully out of practice at being in healthy conflict with each other, and because there is risk in stepping outside the bounds of permissible critique. Besides, we rarely understand ourselves to be in open retreat. We tend to see the behaviors of the politics of powerlessness as defiance of the status quo, a refusal to be bought or bent, a discipline to strike at the roots and forge our own path, a defense against tendencies that will take our eyes off the prize. And that’s true too. All of these things that often unravel our movements have their source in something real and wise and courageous. All of the ways we hurt ourselves and each other in our movements today are likewise an attempt to meet real needs and overcome real problems.

The truth is, the world in which we find ourselves is anything but neat, and one thing we can be confident about is that it could, and is likely, to become more challenging and more volatile before it becomes anything else, if it becomes anything else at all. Even winning, should we be so lucky, is going to be painful. We will still lose plenty, still have to mourn what is already long lost. And if we do bring this empire down, it will fall at great cost. It is a powerful beast, and it will do everything it can to cling to what it has plundered.

Our opponent wants us to live inside the fear and despair that this justifiably calls forth. It wants us to let our hands go idle, our imaginations go dark, our hearts wither away. Everything it does is geared toward compelling us to reshape ourselves in these ways, to accept these quieter, lonelier, smaller, less generous and courageous and honorable versions of ourselves. They are counting on it. There are only so many times one can watch a neighborhood get flattened by bombs on a livestream, or watch a neighbor be ripped out of their home by ICE agents, or watch someone die cold and hungry in a world of such plenty, and not do anything about it, without the shame of that not-doing becoming a stone in the heart, a stiffness in the legs, a drooping in the back, a turning away from one another in shame. But these are the very things, heart, legs, back, and each other, that we will need in order to get through.

There is, truly, so much we don’t control. But even with our very real limitations as tiny human beings, with the heartbreak of this, with the real violence of the systems we hope to tear down, with the uncertainty, there is still choice. There is still the responsibility to take care of what we love, and the task of figuring out how to do it. There is still the hard work of taking agency over what is, or might be, in our hands, and finding our role within the great challenge of rescuing the potential of this world. There is still the grand invitation for each of us to take our place inside of movements, which are our best vehicles for winning the world we all deserve.

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From For Louder Days Reaching Beyond a Politics of Powerlessness by Yotam Marom. Copyright © 2026 by Yotam Marom. Available from The New Press.