Personally, I don’t think searching for revolutionary will among the population tells you what is possible. It’s not there until it is. Such things are conjunctural, as are our feelings of optimism or pessimism. Capital remains the single most revolutionary force in human history, as the past few months have shown beyond doubt. Its immanent drives toward increasing concentration and continuous improvement in labor-saving technology have by no means been abated. Artificial intelligence is on schedule to decimate whole sectors of the labor force in the next five to ten years. We have no idea what that is going to do to American society and politics. Nor has capitalism overcome its inherent instability and recurrent crises of profitability. A recession is more likely than not in the near term. On an international level, the American empire, once an industrial powerhouse, has been hollowed out into a parasitic global protection racket and is entering a terminal decline. And imperialism has not outgrown its tendency to military conflict, as the escalating war-drive against China shows. In these conditions, revolutionary situations will arise. If not sooner, then a bit later. And if not in the West, then in the oppressed countries with a chance of extending to the imperialist heartland. The real question, I think, is not whether history is moving forward apace, but whether the workers movement and the left in its present weakened and disoriented condition will be up to the task of taking advantage of such chances as will surely come. Perhaps not—but in that case, it won’t be history’s fault but ours.
I'm very grateful that GA responded to my writing like this, particularly because I shared it in disorganized notes. I should just do posts, as everybody says...
What provoked my various notes was witnessing Adam Tooze debate Nancy Fraser at the New School. I'd thought that Tooze was being unfair to his Marxist critics and was interested in his exchange with Anderson, but my reaction to Fraser was "oh if *this* is what the Marxists take from Anderson's critique never mind, Tooze is right." I've read Fraser's recent books and it seems to me that she did/does expect post-2008 radicalism to coalesce into a revolutionary subject. But on the one hand you have to be more than charitable to call the Sanders moment revolutionary, and on the other hand whatever it was it lost decisively. At the time I was a big Bernie Bro far closer to Fraser, who was enthusiastic about Bernie, than to Anderson, who was writing articles entitled "The Center Can Hold." But Anderson's Eeyorish perspective proved correct. (Anderson's perspective is as different from Fraser's as Tooze's is, I think that efforts to organize contemporary debates into "left-liberals" vs. "leftists" is off-base.)
What comes next I don't know. I see the force of Tooze's broad suggestion that history is now being made in China and that we Americans are becoming an unstable peripheral actor. Perhaps drama of world history isn't: will we (or the Europeans) establish a just socialist society? Perhaps it is instead: can we accept our own marginalization without a catastrophic war, while the people of Asia decide what comes next?
We're all just downstream of the canon that Secret Squirrel is assembling for us, apparently. I guess I'm going to have to read the Anderson piece too, and try to understand what the hell you're all talking about. I feel like I get it in a vague way, but I'll see if I can understand better after I do my assigned reading.
Fantastic stuff! I agree with Murdoch that the notion of original sin (whether of the Christian, Freudian or Darwinian variety) is not appreciated enough by the existentialists and their heirs. I mentioned Rieff (and your Lasch-Paglia intellectual dyad) in a forthcoming piece inspired by Matthew Gasda’s The Sleepers.
Personally, I don’t think searching for revolutionary will among the population tells you what is possible. It’s not there until it is. Such things are conjunctural, as are our feelings of optimism or pessimism. Capital remains the single most revolutionary force in human history, as the past few months have shown beyond doubt. Its immanent drives toward increasing concentration and continuous improvement in labor-saving technology have by no means been abated. Artificial intelligence is on schedule to decimate whole sectors of the labor force in the next five to ten years. We have no idea what that is going to do to American society and politics. Nor has capitalism overcome its inherent instability and recurrent crises of profitability. A recession is more likely than not in the near term. On an international level, the American empire, once an industrial powerhouse, has been hollowed out into a parasitic global protection racket and is entering a terminal decline. And imperialism has not outgrown its tendency to military conflict, as the escalating war-drive against China shows. In these conditions, revolutionary situations will arise. If not sooner, then a bit later. And if not in the West, then in the oppressed countries with a chance of extending to the imperialist heartland. The real question, I think, is not whether history is moving forward apace, but whether the workers movement and the left in its present weakened and disoriented condition will be up to the task of taking advantage of such chances as will surely come. Perhaps not—but in that case, it won’t be history’s fault but ours.
I'm very grateful that GA responded to my writing like this, particularly because I shared it in disorganized notes. I should just do posts, as everybody says...
What provoked my various notes was witnessing Adam Tooze debate Nancy Fraser at the New School. I'd thought that Tooze was being unfair to his Marxist critics and was interested in his exchange with Anderson, but my reaction to Fraser was "oh if *this* is what the Marxists take from Anderson's critique never mind, Tooze is right." I've read Fraser's recent books and it seems to me that she did/does expect post-2008 radicalism to coalesce into a revolutionary subject. But on the one hand you have to be more than charitable to call the Sanders moment revolutionary, and on the other hand whatever it was it lost decisively. At the time I was a big Bernie Bro far closer to Fraser, who was enthusiastic about Bernie, than to Anderson, who was writing articles entitled "The Center Can Hold." But Anderson's Eeyorish perspective proved correct. (Anderson's perspective is as different from Fraser's as Tooze's is, I think that efforts to organize contemporary debates into "left-liberals" vs. "leftists" is off-base.)
What comes next I don't know. I see the force of Tooze's broad suggestion that history is now being made in China and that we Americans are becoming an unstable peripheral actor. Perhaps drama of world history isn't: will we (or the Europeans) establish a just socialist society? Perhaps it is instead: can we accept our own marginalization without a catastrophic war, while the people of Asia decide what comes next?
We're all just downstream of the canon that Secret Squirrel is assembling for us, apparently. I guess I'm going to have to read the Anderson piece too, and try to understand what the hell you're all talking about. I feel like I get it in a vague way, but I'll see if I can understand better after I do my assigned reading.
Fantastic stuff! I agree with Murdoch that the notion of original sin (whether of the Christian, Freudian or Darwinian variety) is not appreciated enough by the existentialists and their heirs. I mentioned Rieff (and your Lasch-Paglia intellectual dyad) in a forthcoming piece inspired by Matthew Gasda’s The Sleepers.
Thanks! Excited to read it!