– Tracing the movement from inherited identity to authentic action.
Introduction
This piece brings together two movements. The first is an attempt to describe, as precisely as possible, the ontological conditions under which the vocabulary of socialism loses its organising power. It outlines the climates through which the self moves – from authenticity, through Wounding and Rupture, into An Aimsir – and shows how intention, capacity, stamina, horizon, and praxis emerge as the practico‑inert weakens.
The second movement is my response to that analysis. It is not a rebuttal or a comparison. It is a recognition – an acknowledgement that the vocabulary developed here corresponds to the way my own experience has unfolded. These two parts sit side by side because they describe the same terrain from two different vantage points: the structural and the lived.
Part I — The Analysis
The question “Am I still a socialist?” belongs to a grammar that no longer organises my experience of the world. It presupposes a political ontology in which identity, collective destiny, and historical necessity still hold enough coherence to orient action. But my ontology begins elsewhere – in the two climates through which the self moves, the Inherited Field and An Aimsir, and in the structural deformation produced by the practico-inert. From this perspective, the question cannot be answered within the old vocabulary, because the conditions that made that vocabulary meaningful have changed.
1. The Inherited Field: where socialism once made sense
In the Inherited Field, the self is born authentic but immediately enters a world structured by the practico‑inert – the accumulated routines, roles, and expectations that organise behaviour. This field once gave socialism its intelligibility. It offered:
- a coherent political subject
- a horizon of collective transformation
- a belief in historical necessity
- a grammar through which action could be named
Marx and Sartre illuminated this field. Marx revealed the material structure of domination; Sartre revealed the seriality of groups and the contingency of action. Their categories presupposed a legitimacy engaged in serious decay, but not yet dissolved.
Within that world, “socialist” was a meaningful identity.
2. Wounding: the deformation of authenticity
As the self grows, the practico‑inert does not simply constrain action – it deforms the relation between the self and the world. This deformation is Wounding.
Wounding is not an event. It is a climate: the ongoing bending of the authentic self by inherited structures that demand repetition, conformity, and legibility. The self continues to act, but its action is shaped by distortion.
Socialist identity belongs to this climate. It is one of the ways the practico‑inert once organised the world.
3. Rupture: the recognition of contradiction
Rupture occurs when the self grasps that the practico‑inert:
- presents contradictions it cannot resolve
- yet still demands that the self behave as though it can
- no longer corresponds to real conditions
- no longer organises the world coherently
Rupture is not healing. It is seeing — the moment when the inherited grammar loses its binding force.
This is the point at which the vocabulary of socialism begins to fail, not because it is wrong, but because the world it described is no longer the world the self inhabits.
4. An Aimsir: the weakening of Wounding and the return to authenticity
After rupture, the effect of Wounding weakens. The practico‑inert still echoes, but it no longer determines behaviour. The self can no longer rely on inherited identities – including “socialist” – to orient action.
The world no longer tells the self how to behave. The self must rely on its own authenticity – the original faculty that was always present but long obscured.
Acting authentically strengthens:
- Intention — orientation toward others grounded in real conditions
- Capacity — the ability to act without inherited scripts
- Stamina — the ability to remain in authenticity without collapsing back into distortion
As these faculties strengthen, the self perceives a wider horizon – the field of possible actions that becomes visible only when the practico‑inert loosens.
This widening is the precondition for praxis.
5. Praxis: action beyond the socialist grammar
Praxis is the subset of authentic action in which:
- intention is directed toward altering prevailing conditions
- those altered conditions change the self in return
- the horizon widens again
- the cycle continues
Praxis is dialectical: action changes the world, and the changed world changes the self.
But praxis cannot be undertaken as a socialist, because:
- socialism presupposes a stable field of conditions
- praxis arises only when that field has dissolved
- socialism is identity‑anchored
- praxis is identity‑free
- socialism is teleological
- praxis is contingent
- socialism belongs to the inherited grammar
- praxis belongs to An Aimsir
The socialist subject is no longer structurally possible.
6. So, am I still a socialist?
If the question is asked within the inherited grammar, the answer is irrelevant, because the grammar itself no longer holds.
If the question is asked from within An Aimsir, the answer is structurally clear:
No – not because socialism has been rejected, but because the world that made “socialist” a coherent identity has decayed.
The self that acts now does so through authenticity, intention, and praxis, not through inherited political categories. The vocabulary of socialism cannot describe the climate in which action is now possible.
What remains is not an identity but a stance: the self, perceiving authentically, widening its horizon, acting through praxis, and entering fruitful relation with others in a world no longer organised by the practico‑inert.
The old vocabulary cannot carry this work. A new vocabulary must.
Part II — My Response
Reading this essay, I do not feel the discomfort that usually accompanies my attempts to reconcile my lived experience with the inherited vocabulary of politics. Normally, when I encounter a description of the world, I feel the tension between what I lived and what the description demands I should have lived. That tension is the signal that the vocabulary is inadequate. It is the sign that the grammar is still trying to shape me.
But here, there is no tension. No discomfort. No sense of being mis-seen.
Instead, I recognise myself.
The essay does not impose a model on my experience; it describes the unfolding I have lived. It names the climates I have moved through, the deformation I have carried, the rupture I have endured, and the widening of horizon that has allowed me to act differently. It gives me a vocabulary that is not borrowed from the past but arises from the structure of my own experience.
This is why I cannot respond to it as an intellectual exercise. There is nothing to compare, nothing to reject, nothing to defend. The description is not external to me; it is consonant with the way the world has actually felt.
If anything, I feel a kind of relief – the relief of seeing my own trajectory expressed without distortion. I can imagine trade union colleagues reading this and feeling the same initial discomfort I once felt: the discomfort of stepping outside the language of socialism, the worry that abandoning the vocabulary means abandoning the solidarity, the struggle, the collective. But I also believe they would recognise themselves in this description. They would see that the vocabulary is not being rejected; it is being outgrown by the world itself.
The truth is simple: I no longer inhabit the grammar of socialism. Not because I have turned away from its ethical impulse, but because the world that made that grammar coherent has decayed. The vocabulary cannot carry the weight of my experience anymore.
If I need a name, perhaps I am a Praxian – someone who acts from authenticity, whose intention is shaped by real conditions, whose horizon widens through action, and whose relation to others is grounded rather than inherited.
But even that name is secondary. What matters is the stance, not the label.
The essay does not ask me to choose an identity. It shows me the climate in which identity has ceased to be the organising principle of action. It shows me that praxis is possible only when the old vocabulary falls away, and that my own experience has already moved into that climate.
So my response is not argument. It is recognition. It is the sense of seeing my own path described with a vocabulary that is finally adequate to the world I inhabit.
Closing Note (for Wither Socialism)
This essay forms part of Wither Socialism, a broader attempt to respond to a question many socialists and trade union colleagues now ask with real urgency: what do we do now? The ontology developed here cannot – and must not – predict the future. It cannot offer a programme, a blueprint, or a new doctrine. To do so would simply repeat the old grammar under a different name.
What it can offer is something more modest and more honest: a description of the landscape of nowness.
It can describe the climates through which the self moves, the weakening of the practico‑inert, the experience of authenticity, and the value of praxis as the re‑affirmation of the authentic self. It can show how intention, capacity, stamina, and horizon emerge when inherited identities lose their organising power. And it can help identify the features of An Aimsir that matter – what strengthens us, what distorts us, what opens the horizon, and what closes it down.
If there is guidance here, it is not a programme but a strategy of self: a way of recognising the key elements of the landscape, discerning what is helpful and what is destructive, and navigating the fog of a world in which legitimacy has decayed. It is the closest thing to a “highway code” that this ontology can offer – not a map of where to go, but a way of travelling without losing the authenticity that makes praxis possible..
Because the method reveals, the fog can clear, the horizon can be seen, and the question of the next step can find direction.
David Marshall
Skerries
April 2026