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adoration for none posted:E: Could Argentina also be a counter-argument to this narrative that developed countries with a middle class hopelessly tend conservative? The Kirchners had 12 years of leftist governance from 2003-2015, being elected during economic downturn and maintaining that power through a period of economic growth. I feel like one of the main factors for preventing right-wing sentiment as people become more prosperous is deeply instilling left-wing ideology in a nation's culture to the extent that any sort of right-wing ideology causes someone to be ostracized. It would be very difficult to create such conditions, but once you might be able to maintain them. The main issues are that 1. most countries have some sort of existing reactionary wealthy class, including many left-leaning ones, and 2. the US/West exist as a source of culture that can't be controlled. DrSunshine posted:I've been reading Inventing the Future and I think it presents a very compelling argument/answer to the OP's question. The summary is that the left has ceded control of a hegemonic ideology and vision of the future to neoliberalism, and has retreated from a broad program of change to embrace what Srnicek and Williams call "Folk politics" - a politics of localism, "bunkering" and small scale direct actions which are insufficient for challenging the neoliberal status quo. I feel like the problem here is that it's kind of impossible to spread ideology and a vision to the broader population when the media/government exist to silence/discredit anything inconvenient.
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Nov 25, 2020 23:10
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DrSunshine posted:They go into some detail about this by examining a case study of how neoliberalism went from a fringe school of thought embraced by the likes of Ludwig Mises, Freidrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, into a dominating ideology that is all-pervasive.It's not an easy task. It was once on the edge and derided by Keynesianism, which was the dominant mode from the 1930s to 1970s. They had to start from infiltrating universities, creating think-tanks, and disseminating talks, to work in the business schools training generations of management and business professionals in neoliberalism, to finally seizing upon the stagflation crisis in the late 1970s in order to become adopted and promulgated by the likes of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. The problem is that neoliberalism is still fundamentally an ideology that was never opposed to most of the interests of those with wealth/power. Even if most powerful people disagreed with it at one point, it didn't fall under the category of "an ideology that is opposed to their very existence." The stuff you describe (creating think-tanks, disseminating talks, working in business schools training people) requires the support of people with money/power. That isn't a path the left can reproduce, and "spreading a point of view" ultimately requires actual resources. The left doesn't have the advantage of a bunch of wealthy backers funding think-tanks and university departments (and even if it somehow did, it will still run into far more strong and direct opposition from our other institutions). When it comes to the broader public, "intellectual movements" do not spread organically. The broader public doesn't give a poo poo what academics are saying unless the ideas of those academics are being promoted by the media. Most people over the age of ~50 or so literally never hear anything unless it's on the television or in major newspapers. To use Breadtube as an example, if it ever became something beyond a very minor internet cultural thing Youtube would simply suppress those videos. They don't resort to that sort of thing because they don't need to. edit: I want to add that I don't think attempting to spread left-wing ideology like this is worthless. Communicating with other people about these things is important and helpful. I just think that it's impossible to actually spread it to institutions in a way that results in a top-down spread of ideology similar to what neoliberals have done. edit2: One other thing that I don't think I was clear enough about. As you mention, stuff spreads on Twitter/Instagram. But the problem is that this only applies to a fraction of the population that won't be big enough for at least a decade or two. It applies to very few older people and also doesn't apply to most people disengaged from politics (regardless of age), who never encounter the same discussions people like us do. Due to the existence of the Republicans, for the left to actually gain power through electoral politics it would need to gain control over virtually all of the Democratic Party. And gaining power through non-electoral means is something that will likely be untenable until things are so dire that a critical mass of people are willing to risk their lives (or at least livelihoods), and it will be a while until that's the case. So, if I'm being optimistic, I might expect left-wing ideas to gain in popularity with younger generations through less reliance on television for information, but that doesn't actually translate to political power unless it applies to a large enough portion of the population. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Nov 26, 2020 |
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Nov 26, 2020 02:00
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DrSunshine posted:I mean, if you have any better ideas, I'm all ears! I think it's likely that there literally isn't anything that can be done prior to things reaching the point where a large portion of people are desperate. There isn't some rule built into the universe that says "all good things must be achievable in the near future." That being said, organizing labor is probably the best thing that people can do (and communicating with people IRL about these issues can also be useful to some extent). The only real power (short of actual violence) that normal people have is the ability to threaten to withhold labor, and we can only make good on that threat if we're organized. The problem there is that the modern economy is structured in a way that prevents most workers from developing a sense of solidarity with one another, and the gradual increase in the "gig economy" is only making that even worse. Influencing think tanks and academia, even if it were somehow possible, doesn't really have any relevance to most normal people unless it actually translates to a change in media/culture that they're exposed to, and the downside to the (relative) freedom of internet media is that people aren't really exposed to it unless they actively want to see it out.
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Nov 26, 2020 07:35
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