A few points for the left
I recently attended the Movement for Socialism event in Zurich, a lovely gathering of leftists in the context of resisting the World Economic Forum in Davos. Here are some observations and points from this event, and surrounding discussions.
1. Comfortable repetition
We don’t get to spend a lot of time in such gatherings, and this time is precious. One thing I noticed was that speakers and attendees were quite often comfortable stating and restating what should by now be obvious points: that capitalism, neoliberalism, fascism are not good, that wealth accumulation, social injustice and climate change are bad, that workers, migrants, queer, women etc should be included in decision-making, that the left should be an emancipatory project engaging on the ground with local organisations and communities. I agree that it’s good to agree on basics, and to restate those basics, especially for any new people in the audience, but so much time was spent on this repetition, by speaker after speaker, that it started being alarming. Surely the purpose of coming together is to advance conceptually and strategically, not to stay in the comfort zone of “inequality is bad, actually.”
Another aspect of this was focus on past writing, struggles and events, to some extent at the expense of current and future ones. The book tables had a lot of Marx and Marx commentaries, all very nice, but very little on neoliberalism, for instance, or ecosocialism.
2. Lack of specifics
This is a corollary of the previous point: everyone was happy to restate in generalities that capitalism is not great, but very few people were focused on the specific characteristics, actors and strategies of present-day capitalism, much less where it might be headed. When at the end of the event I asked for a show of hands regarding who had heard of the Atlas Network, one of the THE main vehicles promoting extreme neoliberalism and climate denial, only three people in a room of over a hundred raised their hand. If we are serious about struggle, let alone victory, we have to pay attention to specifics. Specifics of capitalism now are in certain industries, individuals, narratives, organisations and political goals. Neoliberalism has been built on the fortunes of fossil fuel and other oligarchs, via think tanks of the Atlas Network, with goals of deregulation, privatisation, undermining of democracy and public services (in fact their goal is the destruction of any collective capacity for decision-making, leaving it all in the hands of wealth and industry). We need to understand the specifics of who is doing what, why and how, in order to build effective and emancipatory counter-movements. As I have argued, we have to pay attention to “what we are up against” in its specifics.
Right now, as Céline Keller has pointed out, we are also witnessing a major shift in capitalism, with the rise of the social media silicon valley crypto bros: Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Altman and the rest. Their type of capitalism is significantly different from that of the neoliberal fossil fuel oligarchs, in its goals, strategies and organisation, even its view of humanity, and we are not paying close enough attention to what this entails. I’ll get back to it at the end, but long story short, this is bad news.
In short, if we don’t care about specifics, we lose, forever and badly. We should care far more about specifics of capitalism and power, not generalities.
3. Very little about economics
I heard very little discussion about economic functioning and alternative forms that leftist economics could take. These were mostly cloaked in state-oriented demands for public services, which is too vague, too central and insufficient. I think this would be different in the UK and US, where a new wave of economists is making more radical proposals, along the lines of Modern Monetary Theory, Universal Basic Income, alternative understandings of inflation, etc. This is a space where academia can play a clear role, from the analysis and proposals surrounding inequality, redistribution and (my new favourite) pre-distribution, the topics of ecological economics, degrowth and post-growth, macro-ecological economics, social-ecological economics, and others. There is a lot going on, very little of this seems to be making its way into movement spaces, which is a real pity.
4. Friendly, but not warm
This is possibly the most important part, and it’s a psychological and emotional one. The far-right is doing fantastic at recruiting young (and less young) men, and making them feel a sense of purpose and home in masculinist and fascist movements, leading to a massive polarisation in the political leanings of younger demographics. This worrying development was also not discussed, at least not in the sessions I was in. There are also pathways for young (and less young) women to comfort and self-worth in the far-right, as Naomi Klein has documented in her unmissable book Doppelganger: the pathway from yoga mom focused on individual wellness to aggrieved anti-migrant anti-vax gun-totter is well travelled, by now. But the pathway for young men is an automatic super highway at this point. Why?
Because the far-right does something very well that the left is not even considering: making its members feel good about themselves. Don’t get me wrong: this leftist event, like many, was friendly. It was moreover refreshingly non-sectarian and free of dogmatic [name-your-obscure-left-faction] bros. The audience was a mix of young and old, diverse origins and languages, genders etc. It was a lovely event. But it was not warm.
Leftists are very good, super excellent, at analysis and criticism. But they are terrible at making each other feel good, feel worthy about being leftists and about being themselves. So this is an urgent plea, for lots of people who will be WAY better at this than this recovering awkward physicist: we need to learn to show love, emotional comfort and welcome, especially to young men. I don’t want to have too much sympathy for those who march with the modern brownshirts of Trump/Musk, Le Pen, Weidel and others, but clearly emotional life for young men SUCKS right now. Arguably worse than young women, which is saying a lot in an era of impossible beauty standards and pervasive rape culture. Young men are lonely, anxious, and don’t see a way out or a role for themselves. This is something that previous generations of leftism had projects for: social clubs, sports clubs, collective health and nature activities. I think that we need to build movements that welcome and celebrate young men, not just as individuals for their woke perfection and massive activist contributions, which we (grudgingly) do already, but as a group, as a demographic. We need to make spaces where they see themselves, their contributions, their potential and their future, in a warm, celebratory and welcoming way.
The main reason that fascists are winning young men is because they are telling them stories (horrible, predatory, violent, racist and misogynistic stories, sure, but still) about how young men, their desires, actions and ambitions are good and valid. The fascists are winning because they have made an emotionally welcoming home for young men. And the left is losing them as a result. Surely we can do better than this, and a good place to start would be to acknowledge this is a huge specific problem, where we can do much, much better. Leftism shouldn’t just be about pragmatic and analytically founded better social, international and economic programs. It should also be about a culture of love and celebration of the better sides of our human natures, about celebrating each other for being there and doing the work of making the world a better place for each other.
5. Bad news at the end
This part comes from the last year of genocide in Palestine, escalations of fascism and violence against migrants, and lots of conversations with friends, colleagues and comrades.
I think we are underestimating the level of dangerousness of our current moment. We are still thinking of capitalism mainly as worker exploitation or colonial exploitation. I would argue it is turning into something much, much more sinister (which perhaps was there all along, but is coming to the fore this decade).
Let’s face facts: major industries, including the financial sector, no longer care about even greenwashing. We are witnessing a true masks-off moment, where they feel it is safe to stop even pretending they will do anything about the ecological and climate crises. This is not because they don’t know about them, or their risks, or are not convinced they are real. It is because they believe they have successfully vanquished the popular movements demanding change, via demoralisation and criminalisation, and even further, vanquished any capacity of democracies or governments to push for necessary changes. They believe they simply don’t have to worry about opposition any more, and right now, they are correct.
Another point: as German climate activist Luisa Neubauer confesses out in a recent and poignant Guardian interview, she was wrong to believe that people and decision-makers would swing more towards climate action as climate impacts became manifest and dangerous. (She has yet to confess being wrong to support the Israeli genocide on Palestinians, however, and splitting the climate movement and demonising Greta Thunberg in the process.) Joel Millward-Hopkins wrote a little-noticed but very important paper arguing why we should not assume that climate impacts lead to more climate action. Social disruption, increased inequality, stress on governance systems, conflict ant the rise of authoritarian politics: all of these can be seen with higher probability in a climate stressed present and cataclysmic future.
Even worse, we are seeing a shift in the ways that the Silicon valley tech crypto bros operate government and see human futures (or rather lack thereof). Unlike previous more stable and long-term industries, the crypto-tech bros don’t even have economic growth or stability as a goal. Their ideology supports disruption, discontinuity and chaos. Musk’s slogan, after all, is to “break stuff”, echoing previous neoliberal calls for the destruction of all social services and regulations, from old age pensions to drinkable water. The financial era accompanying them, of normalised boom-bust crypto scams, also welcomes lack of regulation and stability. Young men are partly drawn to the fascist right by the cool crypto allure of cool-sounding get-rich-quick schemes. In some ways, the predatory disaster capitalism of yore seems almost quaint in its predictable damage and exploitation. George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison are quite right, in their fantastic “Invisible Doctrine” to call these common-era neoliberals the “killer clowns of capitalism”: they do herald a new, accelerated, arbitrary and awful way of running roughshod over our societies, hoping to make a quick buck in the process. We have gone from disaster capitalism and colonialism to cataclysmic capitalism, which cannot be good news.
The Israeli genocide in Gaza, even more than Russia’s war on Ukraine, exemplifies another aspect of this welcome of chaos and death. High-tech drones, based on state-of-the-art research in universities from the US to Switzerland, equipped with machine guns, are guided remotely to hunt down AI-chosen targets: journalists, doctors, university professors, any professional, and their families, of course. Not in the worst dystopian nightmares has this combination been imagined, but now it does its work of death among us. Israel’s economy, unlike South Africa, has carefully insulated itself from dependence on the labour of the colonised, so it can murder the natives off without much economic consequence. Already in October 2023, I wrote “Gaza is a blueprint for all of us this century.” I stand by those words. If we are disposable, on the wrong side of ideologies and borders, killing us off has never been easier to do or to justify.
Where does this leave us? We, our persons, families, communities and planet, are disposable, sacrifice-able, at the whim of the cataclysm killer clowns. We mean less than nothing to them, since they have discovered they can find ways to profit even from our destruction, even from instability and collapse. We, the sacrifice-able, are on our own. Together, yet isolated, confused and weakened from decades of neoliberal indoctrination and lies, ranging from the reality of economics to the reality of human nature.
Moving forward here requires more than courage: it requires faith. Faith in human nature, faith in a better society and economy, faith in our own capacity to organise and do things absolutely differently. I can’t tell you what this looks like for you. For me, it looks like my research into living well with planetary limits and postgrowth societies. It looks like my colleagues and myself, inspired by the student anti-genocide movement, forming an interdisciplinary collective for academic freedom, democracy and solidarity, a necessary step in making our role of public intellectuals more autonomous and secure. And it means learning more about the killer clowns of capitalism, and those who have brought them to power. The only option we have is to put forward our friendship, work, love and humanity, in the form of brave and revolutionary organisations and ideas.
Thanks for reading, I look forward to being with you in this struggle. If we can help it, no pasaran (quite as far).
