"The old is dead, and the new - however monstrous - is here and moving". Paulo Gerbaudo gives his pals on the left a good shake
Illustration by Errol F. Richardson
One of the most interesting theorists and analysts of contemporary politics is the Italian scholar Paulo Gerbaudo, author of The Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism (2012) and The Digital Party (2018), both of which explore the transformation of political parties in the digital era, looking at new formations such as the Five Star Movement and Podemos. (A full list of his recent publications is here).
Gerbaudo is currently writing a book “on the ideology of the populist era, focusing on notions of control and protection that lie at the heart of contemporary political discourse”.
He recently erupted onto his Twitter account with some fragments of that book’s thinking (we’ve sampled and remixed them below). And it’s a proper caution to his comrades on the left (a left which A/UK has a complex relationship with) about recognising their framing needs to change:
The fact that the most repeated quote on the Left in the last decade has been Gramsci's "the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear" is a reflection of our impotence. The new world is already here. It's time to take it.
My point is we need to realise that the passage between old world and new world has happened. Neoliberalism is languishing—and a different kind of meta-ideological horizon, marked by populism, statism and monopoly capitalism is consolidating. It's not an anomaly.
It's a very different battlefield where new rules apply. These are not the "times of monsters". It's a new normality (no matter how monstrous it may look) that we need to come to terms with:
1. A progressive politics that deals with a time when fear rather than desire is the dominant motive. It sounds bad, but the reality is bad. People have good reasons to be afraid.
2. The fact that coronavirus is not a passing black swan but a shape of things to come has entered the public imagination. The ecological crisis is going to be much worse than this and people know.
3. Allaying fears means dealing with the demand for security, protection and control which is moving to centre-stage in contemporary politics. Social and environmental security are progressive responses to a world of uncertainty.
4. Many people have already been talking about the emergence of politics of care as the progressive articulation of protection. Reassuring people they will be looked after will be essential to restore public trust.
5. This involves the reversal of orientation in much of our political imaginary. Meaning an emphasis on essentials, a "barefoot socialism" that rebuilds basic support systems that have been ravaged.
In terms of strategy, the only glimmer of hope vis-a-vis Trump and allies is a mild re-editing of social-democracy, integrating some populist elements: Conte's government in Italy, PSOE-Podemos in Spain and perhaps Joe Biden in the US and even Starmer in the UK.
Not socialism for sure, and not very hopeful. But I'd say post-Corbyn/Sanders this is the current state of affairs.
What may come next and what the shape of a radical alternative may be is still very much open to question. But mainstream centre-Left is re-organising too, that is something that needs to be taken into account.
Illustration by Errol F. Richardson
So at the moment, I am working on the idea of historical meta-ideologies, namely master ideologies that inflect an entire political longwave, acting as frames for political discourse in a given era. Neoliberalism would be an example of that. (if you look at post-war social-democracy 1945-75 and neoliberalism proper 1980-2010, the last 2 have been around 30 years.)
The present moment points to departure from neoliberalism as meta-ideology, and rise of a populist-statist meta-ideology, whose characteristics are markedly different.
We have often derided the notion of "resilience" often peddled by neoliberal evangelists. But it highlights how also neoliberals are aware of one of the major weaknesses of the "new spirit of capitalism", namely its risk-prone character.
My favourite quote from Hegel: “The gradual crumbling that left unaltered the face of the whole is cut short by a sunburst which, in one flash, illuminates the features of the new world”. [Preface, Phenomenology of the Spirit]. Very zeitgeisty.
Trump getting infected will only reinforce the impression that the national-populist Right is toast. Well, don't count your chickens before they are hatched and don't underestimate how deeply rooted in contemporary common sense the new nationalism is. It could well survive without Trump.
More from Paulo Gerbaudo’s Twitter account here.