Now What?

We are told by the new New Left (DSA, Jacobin, etc) that power runs through the State. In her piece in The Baffler titled Seize and Resist, Thea Riofrancos writes: "the state has the capacities to reorient economic activity in the here and now. Public investment, democratized finance, stringent regulations, public and worker ownership, and trade and industrial policy all have a role to play in building a democratic, low-carbon future. In the hands of social movements, labor unions, and allied state actors, these tools can fashion a new world out of the dying old one." The age old question is to what degree is the State constrained by Capital? In the liberal view, it is contested territory, subject to the will of the people. You know, democracy. Government, courts, that sort of thing. It is to this end that leftists like Riofrancos are being mobilized to push for progressive policy and personel in the next administration. This "through the State" theory of change was ratified when this same Left went all in for Bernie running on the Democratic Party ticket. Now, even though their guy lost, they are married to it and must follow the logic to its end. Build a bloc, a popular front, mobilize "the masses" and the "working class", lobby your "representatives", shift the Party, awaken the populous. This all assumes a certain concept of the democratic citizen in a stable yet flexible civic order. Or of a capitalist class in panic mode, willing to temporarily concede a bit of power to salvage the system. And yes, in a rational world they would be plenty panicked. But we just had four years of Donald Trump. You don't get to jump back and forth Through the Looking Glass at will. Biden and his administration and the NY Times and Jacobin all want us to have faith in the illusion, in 1776, in the New Deal, in the Great Society. It is a huge leap of faith.

Deep Green

I spent an afteroon with Derek Jensen, Lierre Keith, Max Wilbert and some of the other DGR crew ( an internet fundraiser) and left with the same ambivalence I always experience hearing their philosophy. They spend a lot of time critiquing "bright greens", which seems to include anyone who believes technology can play a role in confronting the destruction of the biosphere. Like the filmaker Gibbs, they deride "renewables" as a false god because they use resources and energy in their production. They point to capitalism as a cause of the dstruction but then equate that with civilization. As for solutions, they gleefully and patiently wait for civilization to collapse, while in the meantime they attempt to protect wild places. They may be right. They are serious people who have been at this a long time. But I feel there is almost a millenialist fervor replacing rigor when it comes to their analysis, a premise that humans are a virus; for instance, they dismiss agriculture out of hand. All agriculture. Along with my comrade Sandy Krolick, they see the development of agriculture as the fork in the road which led to our current convergence of crises. Again, no doubt that was a historical fork, but what is the point of tracing one's doom back to point A or B? I had this nagging suspicion that none of the people who spoke so hopefully about civilizational collapse had children. I'm all about resistance but I don't see how a dark vs bright Green antagonism helps clarify the task or point a way forward.

The Cure

The dominant capitalist meme against Covid lockdowns is that "the cure" is worse than the disease. In this telling, the economic slowdown caused by lockdown is worse than having people die. This has always been and continues to be the dominant logic of capitalism, but it has rarely been expressed so succinctly. This exact same logic is applied to the climate emergency: yes, millions will die, but this is preferable to an economic slowdown. Where the comparison fails is with the fact that the pandemic is not an existential crisis, as is global heating. Still, we need an explanation for those who refuse the mask and the science behind both Covid and climate change. Tad Delay uses a left- Lacanian framework to approach the problem of obstinate reaction: "...we are subjects who desire, not subjects who desire to know … and only occasionally does that desire attach to a desire for knowledge’. Nor of course is it heroism or rigour that distinguishes a clearer from a less clear thinker about evidence: it is often a ‘crisis’ that ‘creates the certain mental conditions by which they [people] can transition into a different way of thinking about something’." A crisis. A rupture that upends the desire to fit in, to be pleased with oneself, to say the right thing, to follow the cult.

The Libidinal Economy of Trumpism

The left populists such as Thomas Frank have decided that trumpism's appeal is strictly materialistic, that he basically capitalized on the precariousness of the white male worker abandoned by Democratic policy. And I'm sure there is plenty of regional truth to this narrative. But it is hardly the whole story. Yes, certain US workers have been left behind by neoliberalism and the global economy. Wages have been stagnant forever and inequality has hit absurd levels. There is no doubt resentment with "coastal, liberal elites" and other economic forces are in play. But what I see missing from this narrative is the psychosexual aspect of Trump worship, that force operating at the sub or unconscious level of desire. To ignore the autoerotic and aesthetic elements at play in the conservative psyche is to miss a critical aspect of budding neofascism. Many others have noted how fascism operates in the symbolic register and I am suggesting Trump plays a twisted Father role for those fascinated by sexual domination and cruelty. Violence and its fantasy lurk an instant away in every gesture of the Dear Leader, in the mocking smile and sarcastic tone. As Horkheimer observed, what activates the masses is "not to eat but to obey". One sees in the tightly gathered rallies a breathless titillation, an orgiastic release of the repressed that every authoritarian demagogue has triggered in his rapt audience.

Another Great Awakening

Nothing cements "democratic" capitalism's hegemony like a contentious election. "You must vote" is the mantra distributed and recieved across the entire society, insinuating all into an elaborate and dangerous illusion of self-rule. Reporting on the expanded voter turn-out, liberal commentators breathlessly describe a "new democratic awakening". Rather than awakening, I suggest it is a mass hysteria and delusion, followed by euphoria or grief. And that it predictably undermines all the work radicals have been doing the last four years, teaching about capitalism's rationality and methods for reproduction. But here we are, yet again, wondering who will win. What change we will see. Yada yada. The only possible bright spot was Trump invoking the spectre of socialism and exploding open the liberal consensus that has dominated since the Cold War. Particularly pathetic is the universal chant that "BIPOC people must vote" as if, after all the discussion around systemic, structural racism, liberation is a matter of individual action.As if there is some candidate, up or down any ballot, who will describe the structure. As if there is someone who will represent the forces of justice. It is the ritual which reinforces and reproduces the very system which oppresses, and yet it is to the ritual we must submit. It is what unites us, "guides us". Forces identified as Left and Right, liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, will all be out in force to protect the process in their own passionate and dedicated way. Count Every Vote. After all, each one cost an insane amount of money.