Will Wilkinson wrote a post recently on a subject I'm very interested in, the fact that I don't exist.
I don't think there is really any significant threat to bourgeois ideals "from the left". Respect for business, entrepreneurship, and invention is so thoroughly ingrained in our society, I can hardly imagine grounds for serious worry.... Anyway, if the commercial ethos of our culture is in any way endangered, it's endangered more by the more-bigger-faster-radically-better vulgarity of the capitalist rubber-chicken circuit than by its leftist critics, who are, if they're any good, busting their asses trying to move units like the rest of us saps.
Chomsky completists aside, the complaints of the left seem to me mild as milk, amounting to little more than a minor refinement in the balance of our bourgeois values, and some welcome resistance to the bad economist's false doctrine that, given the right structure of incentives, self-interest is entirely self-regulating and thus entirely benign.There's a bit of jiu jitsu here. The left is not actually the left, but of those who are, well, they are fringe loonies. (Thanks in part to their association with one of the greatest minds of the last century.) The literal nonexistence of an American left is often casually assumed by neoliberal types, but when challenged, it is immediately substituted by assertion of political irrelevancy. For creatures of the establishment, a lack of establishment power is identical to nonexistence.
I wish Wilkinson was a bit more sympathetic to the status of those of us on the political fringe, we "Chomsky completists." In part I feel this way out of an ideological-academic commitment to dissent that, I think, any free thinking person should share. I consider political unanimity to be prima facie evidence of coercion, whether subtle and overt. But more directly here, I just think that Wilkinson should recognize some solidarity with the politically marginal. Wilkinson's policy preferences are pretty anodyne; however he chooses to self-identify, I've always seen him as a pretty standard neoliberal, just with better taste and better writing chops. (I use term here in the purely descriptive, non-pejorative sense.) But for a long while I identified in Wilkinson a particular sort of principle, a rare one, which includes respect for minority political discourses independent of his support for the content of that discourse. Perhaps that was pure projection. But then again, Wilkinson's most admirable quality has always been his moral universalism, which insists on the equal worth and importance of Mexican migrant workers in comparison to an American corporate overlord, and in practice, this is a minority viewpoint, too. He is not just at his most correct when insisting on this equality, but at his best expressed and most assured, as well. So perhaps he has some fringe solidarity, after all.
In any event, this is a bit more germane for my broader purpose: "Filter all the OWS hullabaloo through the broader culture and you're left with the complaint that poor people don't get enough help and rich people are too lightly taxed."
This isn't true, and has never been true. And to understand that it wasn't true, you only have to look at the initial reaction to Occupy from the establishment media, which was ridicule and disdain. The narrative that Occupy represents boilerplate Democrat incrementalism arose only after Occupy persisted, drew popular support, and demonstrated deep and serious economic dissatisfaction within mainstream America. The genesis of Occupy is clear: it was inspired by precisely the kind of fringe lefties who have little sway in partisan politics, the kind towards which Wilkinson evinces such slight regard. The intellectual justification of Occupy had little or nothing to do with minor changes in the degree of exploitation of workers by the capitalist class, and much to do with the complete mastery of our political system by that same capitalist class. The refusal to articulate a list of demands had many justifications, both procedural (as a way to protect the right of all participants to define Occupy in their own way) and political (exactly to avoid the reductive, power-worshiping "where's your policy position" attitude of the centrists and wonks).
Establishment political media (and here I certainly don't include Will Wilkinson) insists on the notion that Occupy represents some mild unhappiness with the status quo because the initial urge to dismiss it as irrelevant or fleeting was refuted by events. When you can't imagine it away, misrepresents its character so that it no longer threatens. For a long time, this has been the habit of the neoliberal establishment. (Again, please: I'm not using that term pejoratively.) The ethic has been not to respond to left-wing argument, but to assert that there is no "reasonable" or "responsible" or "serious" left-wing argument at all. The typical move is argument through incredulity-- I can't believe you're saying what you're saying.
Though it will surely be taken that way, I am not here trying to rewage the neoliberalism wars. I do identify, in this exclusion, the hint of the authoritarian that haunts a lot of neoliberal doctrine. Today the battle for the left is still in many ways the battle to say "I exist." Every statement of the type "I exist" is additionally a statement of "I have a right to exist." And people are saying it, in new venues and with renewed strength, and this is a challenge to the edifice of institutional progressivism.
In the Winter issue of Jacobin, Bhaskar Sunkara argued that the "era of Ezra Klein" is over. This caused some hurt feelings, both in the immediate radius of Klein's friends (which happens to include a vast array of political journalists and commentators) and in the larger perspective of a generation of young liberalish strivers who have gotten comfortable with the status quo. The status quo, that is, of generational political avatars, young men (they're mostly all men) who have been granted the mantle of liberal discourse. I won't pretend to speak for Sunkara. For me, the idea of the end of Ezra Klein is in part the idea that we on the left will no longer accept as given that people who don't represent our views are the best we can ask for.
I recognize that this will be taken as part of a general personal antipathy I am purported to hold against these progressives. I know that the chances of this post being taken as something other than ax grinding are very low, and I know that's my fault. Yet to me, the rise of a young, unapologetic left could benefit the Ezra Kleins. When I have attempted to document the ways in which social and professional factors undermine a genuine left-wing, I have always tried to demonstrate how these factors are institutional and systematic, and not, generally, the result of personal failings. As I have argued, the young progressive bloggers were navigating in an environment that no one yet understood, at a very young age. As frustrated and angry as I often feel towards institutional progressivism, I have never denied admiration for the intelligence and dedication that many of them possess.
It's just time for us all to admit that the progressive bloggers aren't anybody's vision of the leftmost flank. And that's okay. I'll be happy not to be represented by people I don't agree with, and they'll be happy to no longer be expected to carry a flame they never really wanted. Or so I hope. For a long time, people who were sympathetic to my position told me that I should stop looking for solidarity with wonks and politicos. I always thought finding mutual intelligibility was a worthwhile project, but I've come to think that I was being selfish and unfair.
In the end, the discrepancy in values between the two groups will prevent competition. Most people who are of DC don't recognize influence or importance unless it's the kind that gets you play in Fishbowl DC; the people in this young new left would never desire that kind of influence or importance. If I were to list the people, publications, and organizations that constitute this next phase, those in the conventional progressive political apparatus would scoff at their lack of connections and power. For us, that is exactly the point. So perhaps they'll just orbit apart from each other. Maybe, someday, even reach sympathetic indifference.
It's funny how things work. I have longed for an emboldened left for my entire adult life. And here they come, in a movement to which I have contributed nothing of value. And (of course) they're so much younger than me. I don't quite know what's going to come next, but I do know that these are not people who are going to accept the conventional script, that liberals should be apologetic about their own values. They embody the virtues of diversity, as well as espouse them; the New Inquiry is a testament to the immediate and obvious benefits of leadership by women in criticism and politics. They assume that their project is worthy of pride, in marked contrast to the leftism of apology that I grew up into. Someone like Bhaskar Sunkara is not going to defer to the notion of the superior seriousness of the man to the right. These young leftists shame me with their dedication and results, but they energize me with their talent and spirit, and they convince me that I could move on to writing about the issues I love best and am best able to discuss, confident that someone else is fighting our fight. I'm so happy to see them, at n+1, at Jacobin, at the New Inquiry. I'm silly enough to say that they're beautiful, and I love them.
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