September 21, 2019, Updated November 1, 2019
By Jonathan M. Feldman
I don’t have time for a detailed analysis, but the answer is simply the following (many of these refer to the right as well, only they have more power thus using their techniques are not sufficient, plus the right does other stuff the left doesn’t):
1) Symbolic politics decoupled from material gains (aside from welfare measures and healthcare, but that’s not sufficient)
2) Focus on the celebrity status and identity of the speaker over the substance, i.e. in a blind test much of what left leaders say would amount to much of nothing if we did not know the identity of the speaker.
3) A focus on deconstructing what Trump has done rather than actually doing something concrete, like organizing massive changes in planning greener cities, alternative energy collection, and mass transit (these items should be tied to local production/job creation)
4) Hero/heroine worship taking the form of a bad religion as opposed to propositions advanced by debate as opposed to personal marketing, the engagement of publishing companies, PR handlers, and bypassing a media filter which screens out: (a) concrete proposals as opposed to 1) and 2) above, thus paving the way for re-election of Trump.
5) Politics is based on branding and not genealogical reconsideration of suppressed pasts. This contrasts with celebrity leftists who make history about their own narratives or their own lack of a narrative.
6) Celebrity leftists need not test their formulations against reality, they have only to test it via a marketing criteria in terms of what floats through social media and vetting by left journalists. In fact, key leftist thinkers contradict themselves but simply survive by floating new brands that refer back to themselves.
7) The details of how a production system works are totally irrelevant to almost all celebrity leftists, yet the organization of these systems will kill off the planet and generate differential power accumulation. The left instead likes to toy with: a) deconstructing who has power and who doesn’t have it, b) talking about spending money (but not so much on not spending money on the military industrial complex), c) symbolic measures tied to signing things rather than re-arranging production systems that under-mine what the symbolic politics attempts to achieve, e.g. sign a statement banning nuclear weapon use, but still permit or tolerate arms exports to nuclear armed militarist states like Pakistan and India.
8) Do not refer to old or dead thinkers, but validate the youth of the speaker or ideas.
9) The more vague or the more your ideas amount to a cliche that is “media savvy” the more the media loves the idea, the left media loves the idea, and thus the left followers love the idea because much of the left is about aesthetics and consumption as opposed to systemic power accumulation and production.
10) A failure to analyze how to organize the delivery systems for what you spend money on, their ideal design, and the meso-level (e.g. not capitalism, not the local demo/cooperative, but the system of actors and networks that produce the desired goal and how they are organized).
All of this has to do with global warming and ecocide. There are clear models from the past and they involving combining saying you do stuff with doing stuff, not just saying the others don’t do stuff. The Left needs to figure out how to systematically accumulate power, not just assemble bodies in a particular place and in a particular time and consume politics.
Of course Trump’s likely impeachment creates difficulties for him and his brand of politics. The problem, however, is that future right-wing populists could easily avoid his most cavalier mistakes and Trump’s base of supporters will be emboldened and not weakened by an impeachment.
Those who would replace Trump can easily engage in some if not all of the failures elaborated above. While the Green New Deal is an important step forward, it does not necessarily explain how the capacities attached to budgets will be generated, i.e. economic demand (in the form of budgets and spending money) does not necessarily generate its own supply (in the form of factories, industrial competence and skills) and thus when large sums of money are spent they can easily generate production failures which can be exploited by political opponents. Hence, the Green New Deal risks becoming a form of symbolic politics. This development is made likely by the separation of its advocates from knowledge about how to actually organized production and delivery systems.
ADDENDUM
QUESTION 1: Is this a critique of Greta Thunberg, AOC, Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion, or a focus on how youth are excluded?
ANSWER: No, the first two have been courageous leaders, the two social movements necessary for social change. Rather, the problems I am focusing on are the following:
A) How a focus on some leaders and ideas came at the exclusion of other ideas and solutions such that a focus on what is good, led to an exclusion of what is very important.
B) When person A + B say excellent things, this does not mean that a focus on those persons is not accompanied by an exclusion of other equally as important, if not more important things.
QUESTION 2: Are you saying that young, critical people are not systematically ignored?
ANSWER: No, I am saying that many critical persons are ignored, but that youth is not the only intervening variable leading someone to be ignored. Therefore, being ignored can be a function of:
A) Youth plus
B) ideology
C) access to certain marketing channels and bypassing media filters
QUESTION 3: Are you saying that a good idea that represents progress might have congealed within it an opportunity cost, such that a victory can also contain a defeat?
ANSWER: Yes, I am saying that because the selectivity of the media and politicians can let off some steam but not others. In addition, I am saying that the far right can deliver services, promises of restoring prosperity, or savings in fuel costs or claims to deliver jobs which the left does not always do and that’s highly problematic.
