|
I came late to Brown’s writing, and was deeply impressed: the diagnosis of individualism seems even more astute living for a few months in the States. I’d throw into the mix some thoughts from Laclau’s On Populist Reason: that the unit of social action is neithe
rindividuals nor groups, and certainly not society: it is demands. Demand for somehting impossible in the current polity such as “Bring Down Washington” or “The EU is a machine for corporate capital: let’s get out”. Neither Washington nor Brussels can answer
that demand: which is why it is truly political. The Left problem has been that it ends up defending the indefensible.
In the Brexit case, widespread disillusionment with a decreasingly democratic, increasingly neoliberal central pseudo-state only found voice from those who have other reasons to attack it: those who want to deregulate food, pharmceuticals, pollution
etcetra, and those who want to increase their own power bases (though the jury is out on whether UKIP tok Russian money it was certianly invested in many other right-wing anti-EU populist movements).
Both major parties were torn: a Tory party defending itself against the equivalent of Bannonism by assimilating UKIP policies, while the agriculture-and-business traditional Tories wanted to keep the financial benefits of the status quo; the right
wing of Labour believing pretty much the same, and the Left only too aware that speaking out against the EU for Left reasons would lose them votes from well-intentioned greens, workers-rights activists and many more constituencies.
As a result and not for the first time the Left missed the opportunity to give direction and political efficacy to the popular demands for a new Europe that is not entirely devoted to stripping the assets of Mediterranean and Eastern Europe. The
Right has a hundred years of practice at doing exactly that.
Vox populi vox dei: but the voice of the people is still not being heard. Rust belt America and the abandoned North of England will not get better because of new right policies. They will continue to believe that this is because their guys have
been betrayed. Unless it becomes possible to re-articulate the popular voice. Taking back control is a pretty good slogan: its only problem is that “we” don’t take back control, “they” do. What happens if we present taking back control as a mission of the
Left - if, instead of believing that it lacks reason or authenticity, we listen to and act on the popular voice?
regards
sean
Message:
2
Date:
Wed, 8 Nov 2017 19:47:15 -0500
From:
Ian Alan Paul <ianalanpaul@gmail.com>
To:
Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com>
Cc: nettime-l@mail.kein.org
Subject:
Re: <nettime> Brexit democracy
Message-ID:
<CAM-xAVY9LZGtin=LyDkSpX=8HMLDSDfLwwJgXQi5+HnAnSkrvg@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type:
text/plain; charset="utf-8"
...in
hopes of pushing the conversation a bit forward, we have this helpful
passage
from the end of Brown's most recent book "Undoing the Demos" which
I
think quite accurately and concisely sums up the present conjuncture we
find
ourselves within:
"The
Euro-Atlantic Left today is often depicted, from within and without,
as
beset by a predicament without precedent: we know what is wrong with
this
world, but cannot articulate a road out or a viable global
alternative.
Lacking a vision to replace those that foundered on the shoals
of
repression and corruption in the twentieth century, we are reduced to
reform
and resistance - the latter being a favored term today in part
because
it permits action as reaction, rather than as crafting an
alternative.
While the Left opposes an order animated by profit instead of
the
thriving of the earth and its inhabitants, it is not clear today how
such
thriving could be obtained and organized. Capitalist globalization,
which
Marx imagined would yield a class that would universalize itself by
inverting
its denigration into shared power and freedom, has yielded
instead
paralyzing conundrum: What alternative planetary economic and
political
order(s) could foster freedom, equality, community, and earthly
sustainability
and also avoid domination by massive administrative
apparatuses,
complex markets, and the historically powerful peoples and
parts
of the globe? What alternative global economic system and political
arrangements
would honor regional historical, cultural, and religious
differences?
With in such arrangements, what or who would make and enforce
decisions
about production, distribution, consumption, and resource
utilization,
about population thresholds, species coexistence, and earthly
finitude?
How to use the local knowledges and achieve the local control
essential
to human thriving and ecological stewardship in the context of
any
worldwide economic system? How to prevent rogue subversions without
military
repression or prevent corruption and graft without surveillance
and
policing? Whither the nation-state or international law?
.....
The
task of the Left today is compounded by this generalized collapse of
faith
in the powers of knowledge, reason, and will for the deliberate
making
and tending of our common existence. Insistence that 'another world
is
possible' runs opposite to this tide of general despair, this abandoned
belief
in human capacities to gestate and guide a decent and sustainable
order,
this capitulation to being playthings of powers that escaped from
the
bottle in which humans germinated them. The Left alone persists in a
belief
(or in a polemic, absent a belief) that all could live well, live
free,
and live together - a dream whose abandonment is expressed in the
ascendency
of neoliberal reason and is why this form of reason could so
easily
take hold.
.....
Tasked
with the already difficult project of puncturing common neoliberal
sense
and with developing a viable and compelling alternative to capitalist
globalization,
the Left must also counter this civilizational despair. Our
work
on all three fronts is incalculably difficult, bears no immediate
reward,
and carries no guarantee of success. Yet what, apart from this
work,
could afford the slightest hope for a just, sustainable, and
habitable
future?" (pp. 220-222)
I
would largely agree with the problems she articulates and the challenge
she
proposes here for anyone who still considers themselves part of "The
Left."
I've already articulated my thoughts on NetTime concerning where I
believe
this "other" world becomes possible: in powerful, diverse,
contagious,
collective refusals which create the conditions within which
something
otherwise can take hold.
I'd
be very interested to hear others' responses to Brown's prognoses!
~i
|