Europe and the Future of Politics

I'm completely on board with being anti-capitalism, but at this point, I can admit that it's such a well-trod rhetorical path that without also at the same time being for some alternative, without having some sort of concrete plan regarding how to start changing things, it really does seem tired and like so many empty threats.

Anybody can look at the world and see problems. Some people are more creative with this (Zizek) than others (Limbaugh). I just wish that somehow there could be a meaningful unity along the lines of these very important issues (anti-growth economics, anti-globalism, pro-waste reduction) rather than pat dismissals without alternatives.

nomadthethird said:

anti-growth economics

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And anti-poverty?

josef k. said:

The recent success of the right in the Euro elections suggests that this crisis hasn't yielded any gains for the left

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But what does this actually mean?

Poverty's a relative term.

I'd be happy if everyone ate whatever they could grow and had some kind of shelter. I'd also be thrilled if our distribution networks suddenly snapped closed and everyone had to fend for themselves.

Also, stock up on water and batteries.

nomadthethird said:

Poverty's a relative term.

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Perhaps in a sense that's true, but you can measure both absolute and relative levels of poverty. The data are clear that productivity is essential to poverty reduction. And absent reaching the developmental tipping point, in the long term a Malthusian logic holds where increases in resources provoke population increases, and so everyone maintains at the same equilibrium of deprivation.

I'd be happy if everyone ate whatever they could grow and had some kind of shelter.

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Is this possible?

I suppose I'm not really sure who or what the right and left are. I've not been paying enough attention to read this, really...

So, who actually won then, who are "the right" in Europe, and what sort of platform did they run on? You say, "European right wing" and I immediately think "Nazis", but that can't be right.

josef k. said:

the left surely has to be universalist, if it is anything, and universalism transcends capitalism (and then, in theory, modulates it).

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Surely this is the way to go forward for the left. Brad DeLong says that the market is productive and necessary for productivity, that's what it does, and the government is there to enable markets and to redistribute the output of those markets, that's what it does. And you need both. And in fact, there are traces of Obama here as well, in the "left-libertarianism" of Austin Goolsbee.

Are you talking about the rise of the far right? Is it also the case, as in the UK, that the former center-left parties have gradually moved further to the right, so that the ideological space that was before occupied only by traditional conservative parties becomes squeezed, and the only opportunities to create (illusory) difference come through rhetoric, not policy?

In the UK, it's not really that the right has made any real gains, it's just that many previous Labour voters didn't bother voting. For anyone. I think they probably would've voted for a popular left-alternative, but there was nowhere to turn. There are something like six or seven very small left-to-far-left parties, usually with very similar names Socialist Party, Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Labour Party (although I note this one did quite well in some areas, if only because it's Scargill's party), The Communist Party, Workers Power! and so on. People have no idea who they are...

The Greens might've been an alternative but I think many working-class people are suspicious of them, there's still an air of puritanism & sacrifice, plus they're probably too middle-class and liberal.

I'm not sure about the BNP (the far right), unfortunately I know two people that voted for them, and they're both middle-class Thatcherite zealots, who probably have close to 0% interaction with ethnic minorities or asylum seekers or Polish immigrants in their day to day lives. What they have in common is that they're both chronologically retarded, both suffer infantile imaginations; and were inspired toward the BNP by a shared belief in pre-literate Nordic folk religion; a romantic fantasy of a bucolic idyll occasionally interrupted by the appearance of Faeries.

Both these people thought the BNP were a much bigger party than they actually were. Which is unsurpising given the disproportionate attention the media allowed them. But it's also possible that many people are actually racist. And what's also laughable... With a consistent media agenda of fear, fear of Islam, fear of being 'swamped' by 500million Polish Turkish muslims, fear of bogus illegal asylum seekers that eat babies, added to the normal fears that recession brings - it's not surprising that when the same newspapers who've pushed this agenda day after day - when they tell people that the BNP are dangerous fascists for wanting to do some about these things (which is what they've pushed in their campaigns), it's not surprising that they're ignored... most people can at least see the incongruence.

The main problem for the left is, of course: commonsense. The recession did provide a point of rupture, a chance to inject a dose of radical egalitarian serum into a cognitive space awaiting its next wave of commonsensical antibodies... Still perhaps it'll form like an autoimmune disease; insidious, patient and all consuming, slowly forcing the body to destroy itself. But I suspect the hypodermic needle was discarded long ago.

Yes, it's time to stop and think. To reread Hegel, be resolute, and redouble our efforts, much strength is necessary at times like these, we must continue our difficult investigation of theory, and proceed with further interrogation of Marx. Then, let the debate begin... !

nomadthethird said:

I'd be happy if everyone ate whatever they could grow and had some kind of shelter. I'd also be thrilled if our distribution networks suddenly snapped closed and everyone had to fend for themselves.

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That would suck if you lived in Siberia, especially in winter. I'm still holding out for a Technological Singularity. I usually read Kurzweil when I feel down. It's a great affirmative read.

four_five_one said:

I'm still holding out for a Technological Singularity. I usually read Kurzweil when I feel down. It's a great affirmative read.

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nah, not me. can't imagine anything more abhorrent, loathsome. oh yeah, that's something to look forward to, the whole universe becoming a giant supercomputer.

it also strikes me as one those ideas that is so incredibly stupid that only incredibly smart people could take it seriously. it also strikes me as more utopian nonsense, technocrat edition.

can't stand Kurzweil either - aging dude wants to live forever bullshit, same old story. when I read that he wants to construct a clone of his dead father, or worse, call death unnatural, claim that we will "conquer" it or "transcend" it or whatever, ugh. just ugh. an eternal Purgatory of transhumanism hanging out w/Ray Kurzweil & his dad. count me out, thanks.

josef k. said:

1) The left (in its current form) is dead.

2) People are afraid, and clinging bitterly to conservatives.

3) The right tends to benefit disproportionately from smaller electoral turnouts.

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Or simply that sitting Governments were in the main trashed by oppositions, which is why the centre-right government here were beaten by the centre/centre left and socialist/left independents.

droid said:

Or simply that sitting Governments were in the main trashed by oppositions, which is why the centre-right government here were beaten by the centre/centre left and socialist/left independents.

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think Droid has a bit of a point here

far-right successes and the low turnout are the two big stories across the continent, and these things need to be kept at the centre of this issue

four_five_one said:

The main problem for the left is, of course: commonsense. The recession did provide a point of rupture, a chance to inject a dose of radical egalitarian serum into a cognitive space awaiting its next wave of commonsensical antibodies... Still perhaps it'll form like an autoimmune disease; insidious, patient and all consuming, slowly forcing the body to destroy itself. But I suspect the hypodermic needle was discarded long ago.

Yes, it's time to stop and think. To reread Hegel, be resolute, and redouble our efforts, much strength is necessary at times like these, we must continue our difficult investigation of theory, and proceed with further interrogation of Marx. Then, let the debate begin... !

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Maybe the time has come to finally stop making silly oppositional binaries where none need exist for the sake of the furtherance of claims that do not need metaphysical grounding in God or other forms of divinity/mysticism (like positivist historical kinds) but that stand up quite well on their own two feet. Perhaps people will finally look at what is going wrong and figure some shit out, instead of lapping up the latest in bourgie commodity fetish ideological must-haves.

Hegel? Really? Further interrogation of Marx? Why not just flay his corpse until it's a soup of sanguinated tissues and insist that this, like communion, will feed all of humanity until the end of time.

nomadthethird said:

Maybe the time has come to finally stop making silly oppositional binaries where none need exist for the sake of the furtherance of claims that do not need metaphysical grounding in God or other forms of divinity/mysticism (like positivist historical kinds) but that stand up quite well on their own two feet. Perhaps people will finally look at what is going wrong and figure some shit out, instead of lapping up the latest in bourgie commodity fetish ideological must-haves.

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I quite agree. The only solutions will come from an ideology free zone, a sort of technocratic positivism.

four_five_one said:

i quite agree. The only solutions will come from an ideology free zone, a sort of technocratic positivism.

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i like the sound of that

scottdisco said:

think Droid has a bit of a point here

far-right successes and the low turnout are the two big stories across the continent, and these things need to be kept at the centre of this issue

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It's a shame this guy didn't get in: