The real self-isolation of the American Left to campuses began with the rise of Reagan and Thatcher.
Radical anti-war, civil rights, radical feminist, queer movements among others were powerful forces that were eviscerated by the self-destruction of trade unions, socialist parties and the anti-democratic deformations of the post-colonial regimes.
At the same time, the rise of Gazza and “give me lots of MONEY” created a crazed individualism that now finds its expression in the self-commodification of identities on social media.
The intellectual consensus for self-commodification was built around post-modernism on campuses.
As capitalism gave itself a dramatic lease of life through among others financialisation, a new and radical technological revolution combined with the rise of a globalised capitalism in China - the Remains of the Left could not develop a social, economic, political and cultural programme that unified all dominated classes.
Left theory and “action” fell between the Scylla and Charybdis of identity politics and the charred ideological remains of socialist movements. Unable to understand the social, political, cultural and economic destruction caused by the neo-liberal revolution, we have to return to basics.
While I agree that keyboard activism is ephemeral and often self-promoting, the left has failed to utilise the potential of the algorithm in the way that fascists and White Supremacists have done.
We must speak about social media and AI.
Love the note and let’s build the broadest and deepest international popular front against fascism and Bonapartism.
100% -- social media is indispensably necessary, but also inescapably insufficient. Bonapartism? To build a popular front against "Bonapartism", you'd have to have everyone first read that excellent piece of 19th century political journalism to understand what you mean! A high bar to entry, that one! But yes, I take your point -- wrote this on Egypt in July 2011... https://world.time.com/2011/07/07/marx-bonaparte-and-the-egyptian-revolution-another-friday-in-tahrir-square/
Thanks Tony, excellent analysis. "Those who are not against could be with us” means being able to work with people and organisations that one don't necessarily agree with in the relentless pursuit of winning over the 'middle ground' to help tip the balance of power, something, as you point out, that the left, historically and today, is pretty bad at doing. I completely agree with your point about how the retreat to social media has effectively blunted mass action. The only point I would add is that part of mass action and alliance building involves being able to successfully challenge dominant narratives and cultural hegemony, and posit alternative visions, so I would view the world of AI, Bots, and social media as a complementary site of struggle.
Indeed! Totally agree that you need the counter-narrative and that is exactly what social media is good for. I'm reminded of the old CND organizing handbook you used to sell at Open Books, called "What do we do after we've shown 'The War Game' " -- the excellent 1960s Peter Watkins docudrama about the effects of a single nuclear bomb exploding over Sheffield was a riveting counter-narrative piece to any claims that nuclear war was survivable. So you showed it to get people on board with acting. But then came the need to organize action... So I guess the equivalent is "What do we after we've put down our phones..."
Yes. "Despite its power to highlight injustice, social media functions more as a means of pacification than as a vehicle for mass collective action." I wish my colleagues on Facebook understood this.
It's an interesting question, if one that I've only really seen examined among military theory types, whether organizers or influencers are the future.
For them, it's framed as the difficulty in stopping lone wolf actors who were radicalized without contact with other radicals, vs the modern implementation of traditional methods to fight hidden organizations.
Put it another way, Palintir was created to identify and destroy organizers and organized groups in Iraq. It is now fully pointed at the domestic US.
Social media politics as a reaction to panopticon: leaders can be identified and discredited, co-opted, or removed, so leaders are a weakness and organizing is asking to all be rolled up at once. Instead you get influencers and occupy style groups. But it's weaknesses- the inability to inflict pain on power, and the lack of sustain, do mean that power can just bull through even if they cannot retaliate effectively.
What I don't think we have is a theory of how a decentralized movement can effect policy change.
Vivek Chibber has similar observations about how “the left” retreated to the relative comfort of the institutions, abandoning its responsibility to live and work among working people in his recent appearance on “Doomscroll” but your observations about the effects (and lack of effectiveness) of social media in responding to power is new to me, so thank you for that.
Tony!
Good one.
The real self-isolation of the American Left to campuses began with the rise of Reagan and Thatcher.
Radical anti-war, civil rights, radical feminist, queer movements among others were powerful forces that were eviscerated by the self-destruction of trade unions, socialist parties and the anti-democratic deformations of the post-colonial regimes.
At the same time, the rise of Gazza and “give me lots of MONEY” created a crazed individualism that now finds its expression in the self-commodification of identities on social media.
The intellectual consensus for self-commodification was built around post-modernism on campuses.
As capitalism gave itself a dramatic lease of life through among others financialisation, a new and radical technological revolution combined with the rise of a globalised capitalism in China - the Remains of the Left could not develop a social, economic, political and cultural programme that unified all dominated classes.
Left theory and “action” fell between the Scylla and Charybdis of identity politics and the charred ideological remains of socialist movements. Unable to understand the social, political, cultural and economic destruction caused by the neo-liberal revolution, we have to return to basics.
While I agree that keyboard activism is ephemeral and often self-promoting, the left has failed to utilise the potential of the algorithm in the way that fascists and White Supremacists have done.
We must speak about social media and AI.
Love the note and let’s build the broadest and deepest international popular front against fascism and Bonapartism.
Love
Your favourite Teenage Trotskyist.
Z
100% -- social media is indispensably necessary, but also inescapably insufficient. Bonapartism? To build a popular front against "Bonapartism", you'd have to have everyone first read that excellent piece of 19th century political journalism to understand what you mean! A high bar to entry, that one! But yes, I take your point -- wrote this on Egypt in July 2011... https://world.time.com/2011/07/07/marx-bonaparte-and-the-egyptian-revolution-another-friday-in-tahrir-square/
Thanks Tony, excellent analysis. "Those who are not against could be with us” means being able to work with people and organisations that one don't necessarily agree with in the relentless pursuit of winning over the 'middle ground' to help tip the balance of power, something, as you point out, that the left, historically and today, is pretty bad at doing. I completely agree with your point about how the retreat to social media has effectively blunted mass action. The only point I would add is that part of mass action and alliance building involves being able to successfully challenge dominant narratives and cultural hegemony, and posit alternative visions, so I would view the world of AI, Bots, and social media as a complementary site of struggle.
Indeed! Totally agree that you need the counter-narrative and that is exactly what social media is good for. I'm reminded of the old CND organizing handbook you used to sell at Open Books, called "What do we do after we've shown 'The War Game' " -- the excellent 1960s Peter Watkins docudrama about the effects of a single nuclear bomb exploding over Sheffield was a riveting counter-narrative piece to any claims that nuclear war was survivable. So you showed it to get people on board with acting. But then came the need to organize action... So I guess the equivalent is "What do we after we've put down our phones..."
Yes. "Despite its power to highlight injustice, social media functions more as a means of pacification than as a vehicle for mass collective action." I wish my colleagues on Facebook understood this.
It's an interesting question, if one that I've only really seen examined among military theory types, whether organizers or influencers are the future.
For them, it's framed as the difficulty in stopping lone wolf actors who were radicalized without contact with other radicals, vs the modern implementation of traditional methods to fight hidden organizations.
Put it another way, Palintir was created to identify and destroy organizers and organized groups in Iraq. It is now fully pointed at the domestic US.
Social media politics as a reaction to panopticon: leaders can be identified and discredited, co-opted, or removed, so leaders are a weakness and organizing is asking to all be rolled up at once. Instead you get influencers and occupy style groups. But it's weaknesses- the inability to inflict pain on power, and the lack of sustain, do mean that power can just bull through even if they cannot retaliate effectively.
What I don't think we have is a theory of how a decentralized movement can effect policy change.
Vivek Chibber has similar observations about how “the left” retreated to the relative comfort of the institutions, abandoning its responsibility to live and work among working people in his recent appearance on “Doomscroll” but your observations about the effects (and lack of effectiveness) of social media in responding to power is new to me, so thank you for that.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kE8K9w3-b9U&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fjoshuacitarella.substack.com%2F
perfect.
Brilliant and so insightful. Thank you, Tony.