Whats the matter with Keighley?

Keighley, a small town in Yorkshire, Northern England (post-industrial,) was among the many small towns in provincial Britain who voted for Brexit last year. What a year it was! a devastating year for the cultural and political left. If one wanted a vivid illustration of how the left have responded to the challenge of the ‘radical’ right in terms of its analysis of the problems the left now face you could do a lot worse than to watch the recent Adam Curtis documentary ‘Hypernormalisation.’

Two main ideas were explored – (1) The origins of what is commonly referred to as ‘post-truth’ politics and (2) The death of utopianism triggered by the end of the Soviet Union.

Adam Curtis explores the subsequent demoralisation of the left after 1989 and its retreat into the unreality of cyberspace in the 1990s and 2000s as a means of exploring how, in 2016, we have ended up with Trump and Brexit. In other words, how those two seismic years, 1989 and 2016, are linked together.

Curtis appears to be saying that the end of utopianism which accompanied the demise of the Soviet Union – and the corollary minimised ability to envision a different type of society than the one we are living in – resulted in a Thatcherite/Reaganite hegemony or TINA. A fatalistic mind-set which continues to cast a pall over politics inducing mass pessimism/cynicism about the very idea of collective social change on the left.

FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS AS AN EXPLANATION FOR 2016?

There is some truth in this of course but Curtis stretches credulity when he cites the Thatcherite/Reaganite hegemony (perpetuated by the mass media) as the primary cause of the alleged outbreak of post-truth politics. It is here that Curtis unfortunately lapses into the old Marxist canard of ‘false consciousness.’

Namely: If the left’s defeats are due to media bias (Curtis’s film places a great deal of emphasis on the algorithms of cyberspace) it therefore follows that the decline of socialism/social democracy can be attributed to shadowy oligarchs and other hidden forces rather than more prosaic reasons. It also follows that the ‘vanguard’ of the left dont need to change the message merely the way the message is delivered. It is the masses who need to be re-educated. ‘False consciousness’ is to the secularised left what ‘heresy’ once was to the church.

OK, WELL… WHAT ABOUT ‘POST-TRUTH’ POLITICS THEN?

The explanation Curtis gives of our modern world – a world of Putin, Farage and Trump – that it arises out of the seemingly post-modern phenomenon of post-truth politics driven by the filter bubbles of the internet (the film places great emphasis upon the ‘perception management’ of the Putin regime in Russia as serving as a modern ‘post-truth’ exemplar) is, in actual fact, a strangely comforting illusion to a left which has always had a streak of fatalism about it. In truth, Curtis is serving up old wine in new bottles. Whereas Marx opined that religion was the opiate of the masses, Curtis guides us towards the view that in the early 21st century the internet fulfills that role.

In reality, post-truth politics is a new name for a very old phenomenon, namely: political propaganda. That political propaganda exists is undeniable but it is not new and nor can it be blamed for all the losses of the left. False consciousness as an idea prior to the advent of mass education and mass literacy (the age in which Marx and Engels lived) made sense, but in the early part of the 21st century it could easily be mistaken for, or indeed morph into, a thinly disguised patronising snobbery. A disdain for the same people the left once sought to represent.

2016 REPRESENTS THE FINAL NAIL IN THE COFFIN FOR THE THIRD WAY?

Hypernormalisation ultimately is a film trying to explain the rise of Trump and Brexit. In my opinion it misses its target. The successes of Brexit and Trump were not a case of false consciousness or ‘hypernormalisation,’ it is what happens when, as political commentators such as James Bloodworth have pointed out, a chasm emerges within centre-left parties between blue collar working class voters and the ‘progressive’ middle class.

In other words: centre-left parties are struggling to represent two distinct groups. One group who perceives they will benefit from hyperglobalisation and another group who fear otherwise. Cosmopolitians vs provincials. ‘Anywheres’ vs ‘somewheres.’ A chasm that has weakened the traditional alliances of the left and granted an opportunity for the ‘radical’ right to build new coalitions within the electorate.

RIGHT-WING POPULISM ENGAGES SECTIONS OF THE ELECTORATE THE SOCIALLY LIBERAL LEFT CANT REACH

Nature abhors a vacuum and in politics this has meant (in this context) that if traditional social-democratic parties are not seen to explicitly represent the views/interests of working class voters (the ‘somewheres’ to use David Goodhart’s term) then someone will else will. New Labour/New Democrat’s explicit rejection of class-based politics (economic populism/socialism) in its endorsement of the putative ‘third way’ (whilst temporarily electorally successfull) has arguably removed the floor from underneath the traditional blue collar working class vote once the electoral magic of ‘centrism’ disappeared on both sides of the Atlantic and across the Western world.

Figures such as Trump and Farage are described as ‘populists,’ what is populism if not the language of class warfare? this is the essence of the strategy of the radical right: selling right wing ideas but camouflaging them in left-wing language. In other words: selling right-wing ideas to working class people. Who are the ‘metropolitan liberal elite’ (that beloved straw man of the so-called ‘radical’ right) if not an updated version of the ‘bourgeoisie’? The trans-atlantic centre-left exacerbate this problem by making it far too easy to be pegged as being in contempt of many of the aspects of working class life.

This provides a wedge that is then utilised by the ‘radical’ right to divide opinion and exploit grievance. As Michael Lind contends:- ‘The cultural left despises and vilifies working-class white men as privileged bigots, period.’ Or as Ed West has observed:- ‘the intellectual abandonment of English identity and patriotism has left it proletarianised, characterised by football fans and the St George’s Cross. This, in turn, further stigmatises such attachments.’

The vacuum that has been created is increasingly being filled by the ‘radical’ right who are then able to disingenuously claim that they are anti-elitist politcal outsiders representing the working class against a putative metropolitan liberal elite. As in Scotland, it would be a serious mistake on Labour’s part to assume, as Peter Mandelson famously asserted, that the working class have nowhere else to go. Brexit serves as a warning, one seemingly heeded by Theresa May to some degree, but yet to be absorbed by a Labour Party mired in factionalism.

2016 – THE YEAR THE TIDE TURNED AGAINST HYPER-GLOBALISATION

2016 represented a political moment when large swathes of the population of the west voted against globalisation or ‘liberaltarianism’ (as Michael Lind dubs it.) This should have been the left’s moment! – – the left have been protesting against ‘globalisation’ (in one form or another) for decades – so why was it not? the answer is that there are two aspects to the globalisation debate; the cultural aspects and the economic aspects. Too many on the left have concentrated only on the latter in neglect of the former.

In a recent interview in the New Statesman Tony Blair captured key aspects of the debate well in his observations concerning the convergence/divergences between the radical right lead by the likes of Farage and the radical left lead by the likes of Jeremy Corbyn:-

‘Open v closed is a really important debate today, because in a curious way the populism of the left and the populism of the right – at a certain point they meet each other. They tend to be isolationist. OK, the left is more anti-business, the right is more anti-immigrant, but they tend to be protectionist and they have an attitude to the process of globalisation that says this is a policy that is given by government and we can stop it and should stop it.’

Blair points out that the primary divergence between the radical right and the radical left is that while the former emphasises putative problematic cultural aspects of globalisation the latter’s focus is instead upon the economic aspects, otherwise they are two sides of the same coin. Blair makes this case in order to argue in favour of globalisation and a revanchist ‘third way’ centrism which served as political orthodoxy until relatively recently.

As Jebediah Purdy (in a recent piece in ‘The Nation’) remarks:- ‘When the choice is posed as being between openness, on the one hand, and parochialism and bigotry, on the other, one has to side with openness…..Taking a democratic, egalitarian alternative seriously requires asking not merely “Openness – for or against?” but “What kind of openness, and for whom?” …..Any egalitarian economy will come under stress when capital is free to leave and labor is free to enter.’

What we might describe as ‘progressive neoliberalism’ – New Labour/New Democrats – is an economic/political model dependent upon on continuing economic growth. In others words it is an economic model not suited to the post-2008 political environment. In a world without growth and reduced social mobility things become zero-sum and therein lies the conundrum for those who wish to exhume the corpse that is third way, centre-left, ‘progressive’ neoliberalism.

HOW SHOULD THE LEFT RESPOND?

The difficulty for the left in this particular political moment is that to sell left-wing economic ideas it cannot completely disentangle the cultural elements entirely. Voters are not atomised individuals seeking purely to maximise their utility. In other words: its not just the economy, stupid! which is where the idea of ‘false consciousness’ breaks down.

THE DEBATE ABOUT ‘IDENTITY POLITICS' NEEDS TO BE WIDENED

As part of the self-flagellation that has occurred across the political left in response to the tumult of 2016 has been an inchoate sense that what Mark Lilla describes as ‘identity liberalism,’ which developed initially from the radicalism of the 1960's – a focus upon feminist, ethnic minority and LGBT issues at the expense of a more old-fashioned left-wing class-based analysis – has alienated the blue-collar working class handing their votes on a plate to the so-called ‘radical’ right.

This has, in turn, created an equally furious counter-reaction, accusing Lilla and others, of advocating a reactionary form of left-wing politics and of allegedly throwing minority groups ‘under the bus.’ In reality this is a false dichotomy, as I explain here. The left cannot fully retreat from a class-based analysis of society (whilst vast inequalities and reduced social mobility exists) lest vacating that space affords an opportunity for the ‘radical’ right to drive a wedge in the fragile political alliances that consitute the social democratic parties vote but likewise: nor can it ignore the fissures in society created by homophobia, sexism and racism.

Lets widen the debate and discuss other forms of identity shall we? In a sense: all forms of politics are forms of identity politics but what of more traditional forms of identity such as religion?

I have a vague suspicion that this is one of the main reasons why the left has lost its way. The fact that it has become, to some degree, post-religious. It is telling that Trump won the vote of 81% of white evangelicals. It also telling that Trump won the vote of 28% of latino’s, it is certainly possible that their status as Roman Catholic trumped ethnicity in this case? Hillary Clinton’s pro life stance plus the fact that 3 supreme court justices are aged 79 and over certainly appears more likely to be a factor than ethnicity alone. It certainly says much of the secular nature of British society that this factor was largely missing from the commentariat’s post-election ‘hot takes’ or from Adam Curtis’s latest documentary.

The post 1960s left understandably finds it hard to reconcile social liberalism with religiosity because the Abrahamic faiths tend to be culturally conservative. The problem that remains is:- how does one ever re-create socialism/social democracy without a shared sense of identity or values that span across the political/social/demographic spectrum? prior to the 1960s ideas borne of patriotism and religion formed two of those bonds of shared identity/values. Now the modern day socially liberal left rejects both as ‘reactionary.’

Seemingly forgotten is the fact that many of the British socialists who founded the British Labour Party were, more often than not, highly religious. An indicator of this was the fact that British socialists in the early 20th century were also usually proponents of temperance. Socialists were, more often than not, also non-conformist protestants. It is often said, and it is true, that the UK Labour Party owes more to Methodism than to Marxism.

Socialists/social-democrats who combine their ‘faith’ (tongue firmly in cheek) with social liberalism are fooling themselves if they sneer at powerful mobilisers of a sense of shared identity (such as religious faith or patriotism) because it then renders their social-ism an empty phrase devoid of all meaning. Man cannot live by bread alone (Matthew 4:4.) Socialism/social democracy that isnt undergirded by a shared sense of identity/values – what Scott Atran refers to as ‘imagined kinship’ – drawn from either patriotic ideas, religious faith or some other form of social glue simply WONT WORK.

The party who marries the two sides of the anti-globalisation/liberalisation agenda (cultural and economic,) in other words a party that combines economic populism with civic nationalism, is likely to do much better at election time. Why? because, to quote Alister Heath: ‘It is almost impossible to be a successful populist and not embrace some sort of nationalism.’ As Francis Fukuyama recently pointed out:- ‘Nation almost always trumps class because it is able to tap into a powerful source of identity, the desire to connect with an organic cultural community.’

‘OPEN’ vs ‘CLOSED' IS A FALSE DICHOTOMY

This is not to advocate ‘Britain-first’ style nativism/isolationism but instead to acknowledge the wisdom contained in these words by Dani Rodrik:-

‘When I present these ideas to globalization advocates, they say the consequence would be a dangerous slide toward protectionism. But today the risks on the other side are greater, namely that the social strains of hyperglobalization will drive a populist backlash that undermines both globalization and democracy. Basing globalization on defensible democratic principles is its best defense.’’

These issues are merely skirted over in Adam Curtis’s documentary if they are discussed at all. The reasons for the death of the ‘third way’ on both sides of the Atlantic and the failure of the unpopular populism that is Corbynism to muster a robust challenge cannot be simplified in a reductive fashion to the re-hashed variant of ‘false consciousness’ that is ‘post-truth politics.’

Old habits die hard however. In a recent piece entitled ‘Beware the prolier-than-thou style’ by James Bloodworth an attempt is made to revivify ‘false consciousness’ as an explanation of the left’s failures in 2016.

Bloodworth opines:- ‘one needn’t adopt a snobbish or dismissive attitude to recognise that working-class people can at times be manipulated by vested interests. Raising this objection with the prolier-than-thou populist is liable to result in accusations of snobbery being flung at you like a handful of wet sand. “Ah, he believes they’re victims of false consciousness; he thinks they need superior types like him to tell them what to do.” Yet there is ample evidence to suggest that a working-class audience is capable of being manipulated by demagogues. People do occasionally act against their own interests…..At the risk of sounding like a cosmopolitan bourgeois liberal sneering at the “Brexiteer blob”, I suspect that decades of crude anti-Europe propaganda from the tabloids may have helped form the attitudes of at least some of the people who lack the time (economics again) and the expertise (yes it does exist) to delve into byzantine EU policy papers.’

The idea of false consciousness is seductive but it is also dangerous. Why? because it is fundamentally patronising, demeaning and illiberal. In essence what the idea of false consciousness connotes is that human minds are lumps of clay to be moulded into shapes determined by mysterious external forces, a tabula rasa, but as Stephen Pinker has argued (in his book by the same name) human minds are not ‘blank slates’ and respect for individual human agency and choice is dependent upon us collectively recognising that fact.

To quote Francis Fukuyama for a second time:-

‘The real question is not why the United States has populism in 2016 but why the explosion did not occur much earlier…….Populism” is the label that political elites attach to policies supported by ordinary citizens that they don’t like. There is of course no reason why democratic voters should always choose wisely, particularly in an age when globalization makes policy choices so complex. But elites don’t always choose correctly either, and their dismissal of the popular choice often masks the nakedness of their own positions. Popular mobilizations are neither inherently bad nor inherently good.’

The origins of the modern wave of ‘populism’ have lay dormant for a number of years untill 2016 saw it bear fruit, as David Goodhart foresaw in a prescient article entitled ‘Last Hope For The Left’ in Prospect magazine in April 2012:- ‘The problem for the left has not so much been “rights without responsibilities” as rights without the relationships that help sustain them. If we are to be entangled in one another’s lives, for example as funders or recipients of social security, it helps to identify ourselves as part of a group.’ To paraphrase Rick Perlstein: Commitments – not ‘interests’ – are the building blocks, not the stumbling blocks, of politics.

The dangers of ‘false consciousness’ as a theory is not only that it prevents politicians, pundits and others from truly listening to voters and their concerns, its also that it paints a misleading picture of human nature. In truth the idea of ‘false consciousness’ is an extension, one could argue, the flip-side, of Marxist ideas that have already been thoroughly debunked elsewhere, namely: economic or material determinism/class reductionism.

If the left seeks a different destination it needs a new road-map to get there. The idea of ‘false consciousness’ and the associated ‘smug style’ in transatlantic left-liberalism is a road to nowhere. No one perceived when they voted for Brexit or Trump – whether they were working class or otherwise – that they were voting against their own self interest. It is perhaps more the case that they defined ‘self interest’ in a different way not easily reducible to monetary gain.

Summary

• Brexit/Trump were not as a result of ‘false consciousness.’
• ‘False consciousness’ as an explanation for 2016 is part of the problem for the left, not the solution.
• Centrist politics that worked during the economic boom will not work during an economic down-turn.
• Social democracy and social liberalism are more difficult to reconcile than one might at first imagine.
• The dichotomy posited by Tony Blair and others between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ – i.e between hyper-globalisation and outright protectionism – is a false one and a ‘third way’ (ironic) between the two must be found. It is not necessarily the case that Brexit/Trump voters are opposed to change it may be the case that it is the pace of that change they find most troubling and the fact they feel they have no say in that change.
• Probably the most important takeaway: culture and economics cannot be completely divorced from each other with culture treated as a mere ‘externality.’