A better world isn’t possible
At least that’s what we’re made to believe, and it’s why conservatives keep winning
The most paradoxical thing has happened. In 2008–2009, the global economy collapsed as a result of the failure of the neoliberal economic programme that the right had been championing since the ascendence of their idols: Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Huge numbers of people across the Western world lost their homes, their jobs, and their dignity, because a group of selfish elites had allowed their heartless pursuit of wealth and profits to destroy our societies. As you would expect, the left initially seemed to gain support out of the desperation of the masses, a shift most epitomized by the election of Barack Obama in the United States. But this support quickly shifted to the right, most notably in Europe.
After past recessions, there has tended to be a rebound, a revitalization of the economy that has led to increased prosperity for most everyone. The spoils got shared around. But this wasn’t the case in the years after the recession of 2008–2009.
Some have dubbed the post-recession years as a “jobless” recovery since the creation of new jobs was slow, with companies investing in technology instead of labour. Many of the jobs that were created doomed people to precarity, as instead of guaranteeing hours, pay and benefits, they were part-time or temporary. Not only did this force people to be constantly on the lookout for more work, but there was little dependability in their incomes, let alone their schedules.
Considering the weak recovery we experienced, people were looking for hope. They wanted a vision for the future, but the left abandoned their responsibility to provide it. Instead of formulating a bold plan that took into account the impacts of automation on employment and presented visionary policies for a society that puts average people first, the left retreated into the narratives of the twentieth century, and even accepted some of the lines of the conservatives vis-à-vis austerity and budgets.
The big centre-left parties come out of the socialist and unionist traditions of the twentieth century. When they were presented with the problems of the twenty-first century, they seemed unable to process the new developments, and ran to the solutions of the past. They couldn’t accept that automation might make many jobs irrelevant, so they continued to fetishize the types of labour that a growing number of people see as pointless, draining, and would prefer to abandon. They couldn’t accept that there might be new ways of formulating social programmes to make them more accessible and efficient, instead of having them function as bureaucratic initiatives that are as much a jobs programme as they are a means to distribute benefits.
The plan presented by the left was dull. People had heard it before, and it was no longer what they wanted. They knew that something better was possible, but no one was championing a path to achieve it, so they started to get desperate. In that desperation, the right saw their opportunity.
Support for right-wing parties arises when people feel a better world isn’t possible. The programme of the right is to maintain the status quo. Without a visionary platform from the left, it was easy for the right to make the case that the neoliberal model was as good as we could hope to achieve. Their propaganda, parroted by the corporate “mainstream” media, even seems to have convinced much of the labourist left of this version of the truth.
Conservative columnist David Frum wrote in New York Magazine that Republicans had lost touch with reality, but one of his observations show us how the narratives of conservatives have come to alter what we consider to be the truth, even if it isn’t the objective truth.
But the thought leaders on talk radio and Fox do more than shape opinion. Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics.
We used to joke about the foolish ideas promoted by conservatives, but they’ve perfected their “alternative knowledge system” to the point where we now tend to take them seriously. Their version of the truth is often accepted by many as the real truth, as the elite own nearly all the influential media organizations. Where there are remaining public broadcasters, their funding has come under attack in a way that has forced them to spread the same narratives, so they don’t present the objective truth, but follow in the footsteps of the corporate media in accepting the issues as they’re defined by conservative think tanks.
When we feel the world can get no better, and hope has become a rare commodity, we become more susceptible to fear and division, which help cement the power of conservatives. This is seen in the growing racism and islamophobia in the West, particularly anti-Muslim sentiments in Europe and renewed hatred of Mexicans in the United States. Despite the known benefits of immigration and the obvious suffering of the refugees who make trecherous journeys to reach Western countries, when we don’t feel hopeful for the future it’s easier to be convinced that these “others” will jeopardize our ability to maintain the present. The right tells us they can preserve the status quo, as long as new variables are strictly controlled, and that’s exactly what the “others” are presented as: a complication that could make things worse, as there’s no way they can get any better.
Conservatives formulate divisions between and within us, to try to crowd us into narrow social groupings that have difficultly empathizing with those who don’t fit within them. This also makes us easier to target, so they can claim to be democratically elected, while attacking the foundations of our democratic institutions without the fear of being held accountable.
In 2011, in my native Canada, the Conservatives won a majority government with only 39.6% of the vote. In 2013, the Coalition of right-wing parties in Australia won a majority government with 45.5% of the vote. In 2015, in the United Kingdom, the Conservatives won a majority government with 36.9% of the vote. It’s election time again in Canada, and despite public opinion being firmly against the Conservatives, they could still win a minority government because they’re microtargeting the electorate, presenting their own version of the truth, and making the niqab a campaign issue.
I can’t help but recall a quote by the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville.
I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all. — Alexis de Tocqueville
Does he not describe the world in which we live, where every time we seem to be making some progress conservatives wail incessantly about how it threatens the present? Vision has become a liability in our politics defined by fear and controlled by conservative elites.
Conservatives win when they convince us not to strive for better. They solidify their power by dividing the population over which they rule, and by making us fear the “other”.
But a better world is possible, and if the left ever wants to gain the support of the masses once again, it needs to abandon the tired labourism of the past and develop a new, compelling narrative for the future. This vision is already beginning to emerge, emphasizing the role of technology in elevating the commons as an alternative economic system to be developed alongside capitalism. In his book Postcapitalism, Paul Mason writes
…all we’re trying to do is move as much of human activity as possible into a phase where the labour that’s necessary to support very rich and complex human life on the planet falls, and the amount of free time grows. And in the process, the division between the two gets even more blurred.
This is the vision the left needs to adopt. Instead of trying to force everyone back into the 9–5 grind and the 40-hour workweek, they need to present a new conception of work, one that accepts that technology will make many of our jobs irrelevant, and assures us this is a positive development, not one to fear, as conservatives and the labourist left would have us believe. They need to show the masses how they’ll still be supported and able to maintain a high quality-of-life when there’s less work to go around.
Jeremy Rifkin has also presented the framework for a commons-based economic system in his book The Zero Marginal Cost Society, and directly challenges the left to present a forward-thinking alternative to the dominant neoliberal model.
The socialists of the early twentieth century were absolutely convinced that nothing preliminary was possible within the old system. […] The most courageous thing an adaptive left could do is to abandon that conviction. It is entirely possible to build the elements of the new system molecularly within the old. In the cooperatives, the credit unions, the peer-networks, the unmanaged enterprises and the parallel, the subcultural economies, these elements already exist. We have to stop seeing them as quaint experiments; we have to promote them with regulation just as vigorous as that which capitalism used to drive the peasants off the land and destroy handicraft work in the eighteenth century.
We need to take hold of this new programme and present it to the masses: a bold vision of the future where we free ourselves from oppression and scarcity, and affirm our common equality as humans on this planet. It doesn’t take revolutionary action one day and the declaration of a new economic system the next to bring an end to capitalism, but coordinated initiatives to grow a people-focused economy until it’s able to overtake our morally-bankrupt neoliberal system.
There’s growing reason to believe the masses will be receptive to a new vision. Their support for the right is already starting to falter, though in many countries the masses looking for a plan have nowhere to go, as the traditional left has fallen for the narratives of the corporate media. Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, and Syriza have all inspired people by presenting what are essentially ideas of the past in a charismatic and hopeful tone, but this won’t be enough to capture real support in the long-term. As their initiatives are implemented, people will see they’re just a repetition of the past, and their inability to see that the twenty-first century needs new solutions will doom them to failure.
The only major movement that may be able to claim not to be trapped by the narratives of the past is Spain’s Podemos, which grew out of the indignados demonstrations against austerity, unemployment, and inequality, among other issues. They crowdsourced their political platform, which calls for the transition to a sustainable economy with a focus on community organizations, the introduction of a basic income to provide dignity for all, a crackdown on corporate power, and a reform of the electoral system. These policies, and the method through which they were adopted, show a different way of doing politics, and of solving the problems we face.
Conservatives are winning because they make us scared of each other and our prospects for the future, but we needn’t be trapped by their lies and their version of the truth. A better world is possible, but the masses need a vision. The left has a duty to provide it.
Paris Marx writes about the growing divide within the capitalist system, the movements for alternative forms of economic organization, and ways of living that challenge traditional narratives. He occasionally makes videos on YouTube, and is very active in sharing news and opinions on Twitter.
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