Re: <nettime> The Left Needs a New Strategy

[James Wallbank <james@lowtech.org>]

Hello Nettime,

I'm sorry to see that this thread has degenerated, but I wonder whether 
this was inevitable. Are the terms "left" and "right" meaningful any 
more, as an axis to distinguish political positions?

We have, apparently, established that the "right" says is favours a 
small state, with low levels of intervention, and the "left" favours 
higher levels of state intervention, and a more expansive state.

Yet these modes of behaviour don't seem to be exhibited. Traditionally 
"neoliberal" or "right" regimes seem perfectly happy to engage in 
extensive state intervention, including by force, when it pleases them, 
and regimes identifying themselves as further to the left frequently 
engage in laissez-faire policies when they're unable or unwilling to 
engage, or authoritarian suppression when they are. It has not gone 
un-noted that regimes that describe themselves as "right" may engage 
with a privileged layer of society (members of the Capitalist Party, if 
you will) in a manner that appears to be generously (even flagrantly) 
interventionist.

I propose that the whole axis of left/right is abandoned, in favour of 
an alternative axis: honest (responsive) / dishonest (authoritarian).

The honest (responsive) end will tend to include:--

Openness, accountability, transparency, democracy.

The dishonest (authoritarian) end will tend to include:--

Opacity, unaccountability, deception, manipulation.

From the point of view of the individual citizen (concerned to benefit 
from governmental competence), the lesson of COVID19 does seem to be 
that the former―honest governance―does seem to deliver benefits that the 
latter does not.

I am not an advocate of radical transparency―the world of Zamyatin's 
"We" with complete transparency and the consequent abolition of the 
individual personality, does not appeal. However, a generous degree of 
transparency, required from both government and citizens, does appear to 
deliver more effective governance. Left or right? Frankly, I don't 
really care - those terms now simply seem to be descriptions of 
window-dressing.

[Dives for cover.]

James

#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: