THE CORE OF ANY SUCCESSFUL MOVEMENT is that the participants enjoy being around each other. Yet, infighting, conflict, and fractured messaging are all too common concerns for leftists earnestly trying to build power.
This is why we should “cultivate” toward the Dao. Daoism, broadly speaking, is a historically Chinese tradition centered on the concept of the Dao—the Way. The Dao names both the underlying course through which the world unfolds and the particular path that a person learns to move within it. In many modern interpretations of Daoism, each individual discovers their own path which represents who they truly are.
Imagine being able to write (or at least think) in earnest: “The Nine Palaces form the foundation beneath the Eight Trigrams. Through them one grasps the secrets of Heaven and Earth, yet the transformations of the Dao are inexhaustible.” Exhilarating! A small dose of self-aware esotericism would increase the productivity of our discourse.
In plainer terms, we take our conclusions far too seriously. Maybe compromise and productive disagreement would come more naturally if we, as individuals, loosened up a bit and acknowledged the self-serving aspects of political expression. That’s what it means to cultivate toward the Dao or the Way. It is a path to assert what matters to you while bowing to the myriad will of the heavens.
A daoist approach says that while political frames such as class struggle, social justice, or ecosocialism offer conclusions, no one’s attachment to those conclusions is produced by theory alone. It crystallizes through contemplation, temperament, and experience along a personal path. As a result, your conclusions cannot be trivially transplanted to others, nor realized on their behalf. But to me this makes Daoism all the more appealing. In true socialist spirit, it fosters a commitment to truly invite everyone to the table regardless of their path.
Another reason to cultivate toward the Dao is that it gives us a way out of a particular Western intellectual reflex: the belief that greater objectivity and precision will always bring us closer to reality. Precision is useful and often indispensable, but precision can also become a trap.
Daoism offers a different standard and asks how an idea transforms across perspectives, or how it evolves amidst new contexts. Certainly these questions are also asked in the Western tradition, but Daoism centers them. These kinds of critiques aren't exactly new. The Frankfurt School, for example, was quite prescient in warning that human flourishing was being reduced to “instrumental reason” — to costs, benefits, and efficiency. They sought to elevate experiences valued as ends in themselves, often taking the form of cultural pursuits like art, music, cinema, and even praxis. A daoist understands that instrumental reason is merely the tool, not the Way.
Speaking of which, doesn’t the idea of the Dao seem remarkably similar to praxis? As in, what are we to make of figures like Marcuse, that appear to treat their praxis as a Path rather than an instrument? Would that not be cultivation toward the Dao? Perhaps the main difference is that Daoism has a richer cultural tradition to explore. Through a richer culture to draw from, it becomes more accessible for anyone to begin their journey.
Which brings us to what it means to put these ideas into practice. I don’t have a particular interest in telling individuals how they can live more meaningful lives. Such a topic surely has been beaten to death. Instead, a far more interesting task — and far more absent — is how political parties, caucuses, and coalitions can contribute to the Dao of their members.
Organizations should be responsible for bringing together people that have reached similar conclusions despite their very different Paths. Furthermore, different Paths may lead to different conclusions that organizations must learn to foster and integrate, while similar Paths leading to different conclusions may indicate conflict that needs to be surfaced.
To help organize these Paths both within and across institutions, this framework tries to capture some general divergent characteristics. Ultimately though, the framework used is determined by each organization’s members and I would expect different competing structures to emerge.
Many divergences between Paths can be described through two constructs: posture and mode.
A posture describes where thought begins. In a housing debate, two people may both care about affordability and community stability, yet still talk past one another because they begin from different questions. A cost-bearing posture asks who is most exposed to harm: what happens to tenants if rent control is weakened, who is displaced when a neighborhood becomes more desirable, and what costs are shifted onto those least able to bear them. An opportunity-bearing posture asks what possibilities are being foreclosed: how many homes could be built, how much cheaper the city could become, and what forms of density or access might be unlocked.
A mode describes how information is organized. I see three basic modes: objects, events, and relations. The objectual mode organizes thought around things: tenants, landlords, buildings, zoning codes, subsidies, apartments, permits. It asks what the relevant entities are and how they should be defined. The eventic mode organizes thought around situated experience: a wave of evictions in a specific neighborhood, the value of living above a grocery store, or the experience of searching for housing. It asks what is happening, where, when, and how people encounter it. The relational mode organizes thought around connections: landlord-tenant power mapping, scarcity and bargaining position, zoning and segregation, or the way local opposition, property values, and political incentives reinforce one another. Where the eventic mode centers concrete sequences, the relational mode emphasizes the relationships that make those sequences unfold.
Political conclusions can draw on all three modes. But people and organizations often have preferred starting points. Some habitually begin by defining the relevant things. Others begin from concrete situations and lived experience. Others by mapping the structure beneath those situations. These preferences shape what feels obvious, what feels secondary, and what may not be considered at all.
Every mode also carries a posture. Objectual thought can be cost-bearing when it asks which groups are most exposed to harm: tenants, undocumented residents, disabled people, or longtime neighborhood institutions. It can be opportunity-bearing when it asks which entities could be expanded or improved: public housing, transit infrastructure, cooperative ownership, or construction capacity.
Eventic thought can be cost-bearing when it focuses on the experience of a tenant facing eviction, a family forced to leave a longtime neighborhood, or residents coping with years of disruptive construction. It can be opportunity-bearing when it focuses on a family moving into a new home, a vacant lot becoming a thriving neighborhood, or someone gaining access to jobs and services thanks to new housing near public transportation.
Relational thought can emphasize how zoning restrictions, housing scarcity, and rising rents reinforce one another to limit people's choices, or inversely how strengthening the relationship between housing supply, transportation, and job access could make an entire region more affordable and connected.
Over time, these posture-mode combinations become habitual. A person might usually think in opportunity-bearing objectual or relational terms, but shift into a cost-bearing posture when thinking eventically. Organizations develop similar tendencies. These habits determine which arguments feel natural, which examples become central, and which tradeoffs are treated as decisive.
We can analyze differences between Paths by identifying these recurring posture-mode habits. This changes what it means for an organization to invest in its members. When organizations create spaces for members to structurally compare their Paths, some will converge and reinforce the organization’s existing commitments, while divergences will expose tensions the organization would otherwise miss. In either case, the organization grows not only by adding members, but by expanding the range and quality of thought its members can bring.
A daoist organization, then, is able to digest disagreement well enough that an organization can tell the difference between a factual error, a strategic disagreement, and a genuinely divergent moral orientation. The future suggested here is one in which organizational growth is measured not only by scale, funding, or electoral reach, but by the depth of its Path.
