We've already had a populist left party in Italy before the pandemic. As soon as they rose to power they formed a government with the populist far right. In Slovakia something similar is still happening. Now what remains of them is disrupting the entire left with their ambiguous and unscrupulous positions. I hope it won't take us years to realize populism is a symptom of the problem and not the solution.
I initially had a knee jerk reaction to this comment, but now I get it. Any party that truly does what "the people" want (or think they want) at this point will be ambiguous and unscrupulous because that's how people are right now. I'm guessing that's what the deal was.
We've had a populist left party in France since 2017 among the big players and they'll never ally to the far-right. I believe it comes down to national context.
Heck yes, been thinking this same way for a long time. When Harris lost and some media were saying the left needed to be more moderate, I felt brain cells dying. People want change. The "system" does not work for anyone but the wealthy anymore.
I've never heard a good reason why a maximum wage and wealth tax is a bad idea. I mean, surely there is no human on Earth that couldn't thrive on a million dollars per month, if that were the maximum, after taxes? $12 million per year income, and, say, people with a net worth of over $12 million paying 2% per year back on amounts over that, surely wouldn't even notice a change in their quality of life. Instead, that surplus money goes into lobbying, investing with expectation of an unfair returns, marketing to mislead people and a whole whack of other uses that add no value to society, and arguably make things worse. Furthermore, at the fringes of society, this waste of money condemns people to homelessness and a bleak future with no opportunities, from its waste. I can think of 100's of things that money COULD be spent on that would be useful. Simply launching more competitor businesses, with that surplus money, would cause deflation and increase most people's purchasing power, for example. Such a simple tax rule change could have MASSIVE effects on society, and fix things for many generations to come, too.
Maximum wage disaudes working more/harder, wealth tax encourages capital flight. Whether you find these believable reasons doesn't really matter but now at least you know some reasons.
Wealthy people hold most of their wealth in capital assets like property and businesses. Someone who is a billionaire doesn't literally have a billion dollars in their bank account, or a billion dollars worth of luxury homes. Most of that wealth exists solely on paper in the form of ownership of some business interests, often ones that they themselves founded and built up. Forcing them to sell 2% of their business each year in order to raise money to pay a tax on their theoretical wealth will effectively lower the value of business interests and with it the incentive to invest in them. If your "excess wealth" is going to be taxed away, it is better to get rid of it before that can happen by spending it on having a good time today than to invest it in growing something that will last for generations but be owned and controlled by somebody else. For people who are hoarding cash, we already have a wealth tax in the form of inflation: every year you keep cash in the bank, it loses some of its value due to the injection of new money into the system through printing and borrowing, which has the effect of lowering the value of the dollars already in the system.
@@thecooletompie Are you telling me 12 million dollar per year isn't going to motivate brilliant people to work hard? Sorry, try again.. Not being facetious here, but I think you're naive if you think these people are THAT important. Furthermore, with this form of taxation, the state would control the capital, so your point about flight is moot. Again, if you can give a better argument, one that I haven't thought of (yours offered nothing new), I am willing to learn.
@ I tried to reply to your comment, but I guess it was too many words. Long story short, try again. You can't tell me a team of multi-millionaires, under the guidance of a central planner, can't outperform a billionaire.
@@thecooletompie at that point of wealth, to be honest. I don't care if they don't work any more, or flee with their capital (cuz I sure as hell would be done 'working'). at least the further centralization of wealth / power won't happen, as that is goal, and what is parasitic on society
Keeping with the political chirality metaphor, I put it to you that critical thinking in and of itself is "left leaning" in its fundamental nature whereas gossip, faith and sycophancy is inherently "right leaning". So where do you want to go? That's the question.
Nailed it! Its an observation a few people have shared. The labour party were being offered aren't rebels who want to smash the system. They aren't reading the room. We're all looking for brave hero's/leaders/ideas right now. We're looking for hope. On both sides, most modern politicians just seem like mediocre middle managers being utilised by a few sociopathic hustlers at the top. The corporate world is already completely defined by this pathetic model. As everyone is so scared and bland in politics, no wonder the public are dazzled by the sociopaths.
They smell of neo-liberalism and are too scared to do anything that upsets business in case they lose rw votes. It's pathetic. There needs to be some muscularity in the messaging from the left.
I think the real issue is that politics is more about aesthetics than ever before. The understanding of what images and symbols the nations population/voters find trustworthy or comforting and using them to push our policy and ideology is the way to win in politics. Sadly, I have a hunch that the aesthetics that are attractive today is those of an authoritarian or reactionary one: such as domination, punishment, hyper-masculinity, and homogeneity.
When the Trade Unionist AMLO fell out from heaven and ran on a platform of ending long time privileges no one believed him in Intellectual circles, yet he completely captured the gaze of the Mexican Working Class. And sure he may not have done everything well, but he sure made many realize that theres an alternative to Neoliberalism. And I think that says a lot.
Neoliberalism is a spook. It doesn’t exist. What leftists call neoliberalism is in reality just the collective failure of their own progressive policies made concrete. Leftist and neoliberal are synonyms, along with “critic” and “oligarchist”.
Well said. The timing of this is excellent for me having recently had a conversation with a friend about US politics. They felt things were going in a positive direction in part because of the aspirational nature of trumps politics (ignoring the “engine of the car” as you aptly put it).
0:29 in and it's already flawless 😅 thank u for all your hard work, you have an ability to cut right down to the core of complex webs of systemic issues
As a former philosophy student i find your arguments highly interesting. I'm from over the ocean, but there are a lot of similarities to our current politics. One of the most pressing needs, we have imo right now, is a discussion about the workings of our new age in comparison to what was from the post great war period up to almost 20 years ago Especially the differentation between political ideals and the view on culture and institutions Currently we're bound to have an election with a completly splintered parlament with populists on both sides of the spectrum. Its going to be interesting.
Sry but this last part (around 20:00 ~) about influencing institutions and individuals doing their own thing triggered me beyond my limits: We find ourselves Imho (no not really because those are hard objective facts) on a strange planet on which the spaces in which we can organize our base of life are shrinking faster with every day passing. In the end the imperative to CEASE(!!!!!) the systematic escalating annihilation of our base of life for the profits of a few will get stronger as well. Well, at least if we as leftists dont refrain from this collective attitude to have a competition amongst ourselves for who the most liberaldemocratic embodiment for the end history might be - and then of course to flatten it out to, you know: BASIC GOLFCOURSE DEMOCRACY. The reason this triggered me is because it lays the groumdwork for a defenseless left in the end, all for the sakes of radical opposition to any forms of authoritarianism. Ironically anarchists are most effective organize such hierachies if they are effective and not just laying around. The problem is the liberal-democratic spectrum which tried to pander to mainstream society. But to overcome that you have to able to acknowledge a very simple - and btw feminist fact: namely that as humans on a strange planet we got our measure of equality dealt down the sad reality that we all are walking ignorant pieces of meatshit with a capacity for ecological integration.
I really don't think it's that complicated. The institutions that were set up to control excessive financialisation and control capital flows were almost all dismantled. This led to financial crises due to excessive risk taking and serious economic consequences. Those who took massive, illegal risks with other people's money simply weren't punished at all. The institutions were reformed but still allow almost complete tax avoidance by the top 0.1% of the rich list. On the other hand, normal people still pay lots of tax, and have been seeing very modest quality of life improvements. Regulations get more complicated for them, while getting less complicated for the ultra-wealthy. More than ever, money gets you anything you want. All this happened with "left" parties either driving it or complicit (a la Pelosi's share portfolio, not to mention Clinton and Blair). It appears that the left started believing in trickle down too. So yeah, maybe not worth my vote after all.
Are you talking about "The Left", or are you talking about an "Extreme Centrism"? What you describe is rooted in current institutions -- e.g. your discussion about aspiration or professions. Yet the one thing we know about the near future of 'late stage capitalism' is that be it climate change, resource depletion, or the geopolitics of a new non-Western geopolitical block (aka. in Trumpian tones, "China"), that system cannot continue as-is: The right's intrinsic reactionary 'conservatism' kicks back against these inevitable changes; whilst the 'Extreme Centre' talk of reform, or technology, or umpteen other forms of deck-chair rearrangement to try an preserve the superstructure of the state through adaptation. I would argue that a true "Leftist" lens is not anti-capitalist, or even simply anti-establishment, but seeks an active rearrangement of the superstructure to a form which ensures global justice, equity, and in terms of recent dialogues, ecological sustainability. That intrinsically challenges not simply capitalist structures, but also the high levels of material consumption which citizens of The West currently 'aspire' to pursue. Personally I think we have to question many aspects of modern industrialism -- including the digital architectures you imply can deliver a new Utopian vision of political participation, because they all rely on global mining, processing, logistics, and control structures which are inherently skewed towards the 'top 10%' who consume half of everything, and against the 'bottom 50%' who only consume 10%.
@@Redactedlllllllllllll I could write at length about the paucity of evidence to support the notion of an 'Overton Window', and that its use in recent political dialogue against the background of algorithmically-mediated communications media is a clearly fallacious, but I know from experience that Centrists don't want to hear that level of critique.
The UK is a multi-nation state rather than a nation-state. If its nation-states you want, then Scotland, Wales, Northumbria, England (South), and possibly Cornwall would need to have their own states and NI would need to go to the ROI.
The problem is more fundamental i.e. nation/tradition, aspirational goals, liberty (Hayek/Berlin), competition/hierarchy, and loyalty are for many men more important values than equality. For them egalitarianism doesn’t have only diminished gains, but is essentially a negative development. Consequently, they don’t consider suffering of the weak a source of transcendental morality i.e. they are anti-Rawls.
Worldwide we have the issue that for men, getting closer to gender equality is seen as them losing (and I suppose they are losing power over women) America is also still fighting the civil war. There's a lot of people who don't want people of color to be equal. Some are explicit, but a lot are convinced they're not racist. Often replacing the rhetoric with the rhetoric of not wanting poor people, or housing density.
The fundamental problem is that the lefts social base is almost entirely limited to middle class professionals and the knowledge making elite institutions that populists so correctly despise. In many ways, the very definition of a leftists in todays world has become a defender of established knowledge power and institutions against the evolving structures of new media and the populist challenges it brings about. Its sad, but that makes it almost impossible to do anything useful in the mantel of the current left. In my opinion, the only option left for seriously social change is to completely disregard the old left, its comcerns, culture, organisations, and social base for something totally new. I guess there would have to be some sort of clear distinction drawn between this movement and the old left, both to show the wider public that we don't have anything to do with them, and to show the old left they will never be welcome in this new movement
Rogan is a useful idiot. My main exposure to him is another millionaire he supports because they're anti-establishment - Graham Hancock. He was gracious enough to host a debate in which Hancock was trounced for having no evidence, but then went back and trumpeted the nonsense again, with attacks on the archaeologist who debated him (who made one small mistake, which he admitted and corrected). He seems to embrace anything which can claim to be anti-establishment no matter how absurd it is.
I agree with the vast majority of what was said and have no fundamental disagreements, except I think we need to remember that liberals are not really on the left. To me, being on the left means you are some sort of socialist. Liberals are not all bad, but it disservice us to be beholden to a group of people who think very similarly to those who are considered right wing. I'd could understand including SocDems as leftist
It doesn't help to confront populism with populism. I don't care how many noteworthy intellectuals like Chantal Mouffe think it should work, it doesn't. The only thing that happens when two populist parties confront each other is populist polarization, which inevitebly leads into democratic backsliding. Take the case of hungary for example, there you had two populist blocs going at each other, both rethorically denying the legitimacy of the other and of elections they lost, both undermining any possibility of crossing the ile, finding compromise and working together for the benefit of the country. No matter who would have won this conflict there would be no way back into a stable democracy. In that case the populist right of the Fidesz party around Victor Orban won - for frankly the right wing is better at populism - but for the state of hungarian democracy it wouldn't have mattered. When confronted with democracy eroding populism you can't fight it with more populism, you need to combat it with a different vision, one that deepens democracy instead of undermining it. Populism is no solution! Doing f all like the democrats are trying, doesn't work either, I'll give you that much.
@BigToody That depends on the given political system that you are living under. In general democracy can be deepened in a couple of ways. - extensive: extend the societal realms wherein democracy is applied (e.g. a stakeholder princeple wherein not only capital driven firms and there shareholders, alongside with the local government - all these groups tend to gain from industrial activity - but also the other stakeholders, say people who live there get to suffer the pollution noise and whatever else is associated with that activity) - inclusive: include people into democratic decision making that are currently being excluded (as simple as it sounds: could be voting rights for young adults, could be the extension of local level voting rights to foreign workers in your community, could be easier access to voting in general) - intrinsic: the democratization of the institutions themselves (institutions are arbiters of stability, yet democracy is a system build on change through the mandate of the people - this is an obvious conflict of interest . Therefore one can try to make the institutions that govern everyday life themselves operate on democratic principles) These are just a couple of ideas from the top of my head - there's thousands more options. Everything is contingent, nothing is necessary - we life under the exact circumstances that we have choosen and all of them can be changed.
@@Sebastian_Niedermeier so for extensive, those who are negatively impacted by certain activities get to have a more direct say in how those activities are managed and regulated? What happens if they say “no more! Get out of here!”? If it’s a necessary and beneficial project, wouldn’t listening to those voices be a hindrance? Like NIMBYism
@@BigToody That is a valid concern. Yet democracy is built on politicizing such conflicts - even the ones motivated by bigotterie or narcissistic self interests - and trying to find a compromise. Most of the times the majority of people is quite reasonable when they are actually being listened to, reasoned with, and most crucially of all involved in the decision making. This is achieved through the democratization of the process. When this isn't done and people feel like politics is something that happens to them instead of something that they are actively involved with designing, they loose their sense of self-actualizing, retreat into conspiracies, and look for a populist strongman who will restore the order that they no longer feel to belong to. We shouldn't try to defend democracy as a never ending series of retreat battles that continuously loose ground, but instead go on the offensive by daring to deepen democracy even for the ones we disagree with. This is mostly theoretical. Would require much work as well as the support of larger networks - like say the DNC. Individually there's only small things to be accomplished, in your local townhall, parent's teacher association or wherever forms of direct democracy already exist. Don't just attend, encourage others to do so - even when there isn't a specific issue you are concerned with. Democratic participation is like any activity conditioned through habitulization. The more people get into the habbit of participation, the louder the voices asking for more democracy will become. Also question every institution. Why it is, what if does, and whether it wouldn't be better if it did things different. Every institution will present itself as necessary, natural and rational - they are not. All of them are the result of very specific historic power dynamics, all of them can be changed. You don't have to do all of this all the time - do some of it sometimes, encourage others to follow suit. That's already a lot from what can be achieved from an individual level. And rather sooner than later you won't be individual anymore, for you are bound to meet people along the way and thus you have become part of a network.
4:32 does he know Wasp literally just means white Anglo Saxon Protestant? In other words, the original founders of America? And still the majority in the country to this day? (Albeit by much smaller margins)
@@Novalarke Technically bolsheviks weren’t populist cause they relied mostly on worker, not the peasants who made up the vast majority of Russian population at the time.
The future will be brief because material conditions will shift so drastically that the capitalist mode of production will no longer be viable even if we wanted it.
No, democratic representation has collapsed, and fascism is the future. Economics did not get us here. We are here because the citizens got complacent about involvement in government, letting the corrupt take too much power (as they do both under capitalism and under socialism). The corrupt win because they are the ones willing to put in the work. We have late stage capitalism, and anti-socialist rhetoric BECAUSE we have lost our democracy, not the other way around.
I've started a Substack! This is a video version of the first article: lewiswaller.substack.com/p/an-anti-establishment-left
me too. They said Bluesky was gonna be lit and i was dissapointed. migrating to the stack
We're now in a period of anti-politics. What matters is the aesthetics.
“The left should pick up the weapon before the enemy does and use it responsibly” amazing!!
We've already had a populist left party in Italy before the pandemic. As soon as they rose to power they formed a government with the populist far right. In Slovakia something similar is still happening. Now what remains of them is disrupting the entire left with their ambiguous and unscrupulous positions. I hope it won't take us years to realize populism is a symptom of the problem and not the solution.
That makes me wanna pick up a Kropotkin book
I initially had a knee jerk reaction to this comment, but now I get it. Any party that truly does what "the people" want (or think they want) at this point will be ambiguous and unscrupulous because that's how people are right now. I'm guessing that's what the deal was.
We've had a populist left party in France since 2017 among the big players and they'll never ally to the far-right. I believe it comes down to national context.
@@BabeufFanAccountYes. It sounds like the Italian group has a bit of a skill issue.
Heck yes, been thinking this same way for a long time. When Harris lost and some media were saying the left needed to be more moderate, I felt brain cells dying. People want change. The "system" does not work for anyone but the wealthy anymore.
I've never heard a good reason why a maximum wage and wealth tax is a bad idea. I mean, surely there is no human on Earth that couldn't thrive on a million dollars per month, if that were the maximum, after taxes? $12 million per year income, and, say, people with a net worth of over $12 million paying 2% per year back on amounts over that, surely wouldn't even notice a change in their quality of life.
Instead, that surplus money goes into lobbying, investing with expectation of an unfair returns, marketing to mislead people and a whole whack of other uses that add no value to society, and arguably make things worse. Furthermore, at the fringes of society, this waste of money condemns people to homelessness and a bleak future with no opportunities, from its waste. I can think of 100's of things that money COULD be spent on that would be useful. Simply launching more competitor businesses, with that surplus money, would cause deflation and increase most people's purchasing power, for example.
Such a simple tax rule change could have MASSIVE effects on society, and fix things for many generations to come, too.
Maximum wage disaudes working more/harder, wealth tax encourages capital flight. Whether you find these believable reasons doesn't really matter but now at least you know some reasons.
Wealthy people hold most of their wealth in capital assets like property and businesses. Someone who is a billionaire doesn't literally have a billion dollars in their bank account, or a billion dollars worth of luxury homes. Most of that wealth exists solely on paper in the form of ownership of some business interests, often ones that they themselves founded and built up. Forcing them to sell 2% of their business each year in order to raise money to pay a tax on their theoretical wealth will effectively lower the value of business interests and with it the incentive to invest in them. If your "excess wealth" is going to be taxed away, it is better to get rid of it before that can happen by spending it on having a good time today than to invest it in growing something that will last for generations but be owned and controlled by somebody else.
For people who are hoarding cash, we already have a wealth tax in the form of inflation: every year you keep cash in the bank, it loses some of its value due to the injection of new money into the system through printing and borrowing, which has the effect of lowering the value of the dollars already in the system.
@@thecooletompie Are you telling me 12 million dollar per year isn't going to motivate brilliant people to work hard? Sorry, try again.. Not being facetious here, but I think you're naive if you think these people are THAT important. Furthermore, with this form of taxation, the state would control the capital, so your point about flight is moot. Again, if you can give a better argument, one that I haven't thought of (yours offered nothing new), I am willing to learn.
@ I tried to reply to your comment, but I guess it was too many words. Long story short, try again. You can't tell me a team of multi-millionaires, under the guidance of a central planner, can't outperform a billionaire.
@@thecooletompie at that point of wealth, to be honest. I don't care if they don't work any more, or flee with their capital (cuz I sure as hell would be done 'working'). at least the further centralization of wealth / power won't happen, as that is goal, and what is parasitic on society
Thank you Lewis. Exquisite analysis as per usual.
Slurp.
Keeping with the political chirality metaphor, I put it to you that critical thinking in and of itself is "left leaning" in its fundamental nature whereas gossip, faith and sycophancy is inherently "right leaning". So where do you want to go? That's the question.
Nailed it! Its an observation a few people have shared. The labour party were being offered aren't rebels who want to smash the system. They aren't reading the room. We're all looking for brave hero's/leaders/ideas right now. We're looking for hope.
On both sides, most modern politicians just seem like mediocre middle managers being utilised by a few sociopathic hustlers at the top. The corporate world is already completely defined by this pathetic model. As everyone is so scared and bland in politics, no wonder the public are dazzled by the sociopaths.
They smell of neo-liberalism and are too scared to do anything that upsets business in case they lose rw votes. It's pathetic. There needs to be some muscularity in the messaging from the left.
Been this way since Rome.
Thanks so much for this! I think Chantal Mouffe - For a Left Populism is a must read for these days
Excellent book. Way shorter and more accessible than Laclau's stuff.
Turn out for UK elections is minuscule.
Wow. Great analysis. Loved it. Keep it up 🤌
I think the real issue is that politics is more about aesthetics than ever before. The understanding of what images and symbols the nations population/voters find trustworthy or comforting and using them to push our policy and ideology is the way to win in politics. Sadly, I have a hunch that the aesthetics that are attractive today is those of an authoritarian or reactionary one: such as domination, punishment, hyper-masculinity, and homogeneity.
When the Trade Unionist AMLO fell out from heaven and ran on a platform of ending long time privileges no one believed him in Intellectual circles, yet he completely captured the gaze of the Mexican Working Class. And sure he may not have done everything well, but he sure made many realize that theres an alternative to Neoliberalism.
And I think that says a lot.
Neoliberalism is a spook. It doesn’t exist. What leftists call neoliberalism is in reality just the collective failure of their own progressive policies made concrete. Leftist and neoliberal are synonyms, along with “critic” and “oligarchist”.
"And was Jerusalem builded here, Among these dark Satanic Mills?"
How do the Tories somehow own a song with that line in it?
Well said. The timing of this is excellent for me having recently had a conversation with a friend about US politics. They felt things were going in a positive direction in part because of the aspirational nature of trumps politics (ignoring the “engine of the car” as you aptly put it).
0:29 in and it's already flawless 😅 thank u for all your hard work, you have an ability to cut right down to the core of complex webs of systemic issues
As a former philosophy student i find your arguments highly interesting. I'm from over the ocean, but there are a lot of similarities to our current politics.
One of the most pressing needs, we have imo right now, is a discussion about the workings of our new age in comparison to what was from the post great war period up to almost 20 years ago
Especially the differentation between political ideals and the view on culture and institutions
Currently we're bound to have an election with a completly splintered parlament with populists on both sides of the spectrum. Its going to be interesting.
Sry but this last part (around 20:00 ~) about influencing institutions and individuals doing their own thing triggered me beyond my limits:
We find ourselves Imho (no not really because those are hard objective facts) on a strange planet on which the spaces in which we can organize our base of life are shrinking faster with every day passing. In the end the imperative to CEASE(!!!!!) the systematic escalating annihilation of our base of life for the profits of a few will get stronger as well. Well, at least if we as leftists dont refrain from this collective attitude to have a competition amongst ourselves for who the most liberaldemocratic embodiment for the end history might be - and then of course to flatten it out to, you know: BASIC GOLFCOURSE DEMOCRACY.
The reason this triggered me is because it lays the groumdwork for a defenseless left in the end, all for the sakes of radical opposition to any forms of authoritarianism. Ironically anarchists are most effective organize such hierachies if they are effective and not just laying around. The problem is the liberal-democratic spectrum which tried to pander to mainstream society. But to overcome that you have to able to acknowledge a very simple - and btw feminist fact: namely that as humans on a strange planet we got our measure of equality dealt down the sad reality that we all are walking ignorant pieces of meatshit with a capacity for ecological integration.
I really don't think it's that complicated. The institutions that were set up to control excessive financialisation and control capital flows were almost all dismantled. This led to financial crises due to excessive risk taking and serious economic consequences. Those who took massive, illegal risks with other people's money simply weren't punished at all. The institutions were reformed but still allow almost complete tax avoidance by the top 0.1% of the rich list.
On the other hand, normal people still pay lots of tax, and have been seeing very modest quality of life improvements. Regulations get more complicated for them, while getting less complicated for the ultra-wealthy. More than ever, money gets you anything you want.
All this happened with "left" parties either driving it or complicit (a la Pelosi's share portfolio, not to mention Clinton and Blair). It appears that the left started believing in trickle down too. So yeah, maybe not worth my vote after all.
Feel like we should make a new Adam Curtis style documentary based on what's happening rn
7:43 “I don’t think it’s opportunistic.” Isn’t what you said right after that basically a definition of opportunism?
Are you talking about "The Left", or are you talking about an "Extreme Centrism"?
What you describe is rooted in current institutions -- e.g. your discussion about aspiration or professions. Yet the one thing we know about the near future of 'late stage capitalism' is that be it climate change, resource depletion, or the geopolitics of a new non-Western geopolitical block (aka. in Trumpian tones, "China"), that system cannot continue as-is: The right's intrinsic reactionary 'conservatism' kicks back against these inevitable changes; whilst the 'Extreme Centre' talk of reform, or technology, or umpteen other forms of deck-chair rearrangement to try an preserve the superstructure of the state through adaptation.
I would argue that a true "Leftist" lens is not anti-capitalist, or even simply anti-establishment, but seeks an active rearrangement of the superstructure to a form which ensures global justice, equity, and in terms of recent dialogues, ecological sustainability. That intrinsically challenges not simply capitalist structures, but also the high levels of material consumption which citizens of The West currently 'aspire' to pursue. Personally I think we have to question many aspects of modern industrialism -- including the digital architectures you imply can deliver a new Utopian vision of political participation, because they all rely on global mining, processing, logistics, and control structures which are inherently skewed towards the 'top 10%' who consume half of everything, and against the 'bottom 50%' who only consume 10%.
That part of the left is outside of the Overton window, further out than fascists. Isn't that something to behold.
@@Redactedlllllllllllll I could write at length about the paucity of evidence to support the notion of an 'Overton Window', and that its use in recent political dialogue against the background of algorithmically-mediated communications media is a clearly fallacious, but I know from experience that Centrists don't want to hear that level of critique.
That vision IS anti-establishment, just not blindly so.
Great video -thank you! Amazing closing statement!! 😲👍🙏
This is excellent! Thank you 🙏
The UK is a multi-nation state rather than a nation-state. If its nation-states you want, then Scotland, Wales, Northumbria, England (South), and possibly Cornwall would need to have their own states and NI would need to go to the ROI.
Well said.
The problem is more fundamental i.e. nation/tradition, aspirational goals, liberty (Hayek/Berlin), competition/hierarchy, and loyalty are for many men more important values than equality. For them egalitarianism doesn’t have only diminished gains, but is essentially a negative development. Consequently, they don’t consider suffering of the weak a source of transcendental morality i.e. they are anti-Rawls.
Worldwide we have the issue that for men, getting closer to gender equality is seen as them losing (and I suppose they are losing power over women)
America is also still fighting the civil war. There's a lot of people who don't want people of color to be equal. Some are explicit, but a lot are convinced they're not racist. Often replacing the rhetoric with the rhetoric of not wanting poor people, or housing density.
The fundamental problem is that the lefts social base is almost entirely limited to middle class professionals and the knowledge making elite institutions that populists so correctly despise. In many ways, the very definition of a leftists in todays world has become a defender of established knowledge power and institutions against the evolving structures of new media and the populist challenges it brings about. Its sad, but that makes it almost impossible to do anything useful in the mantel of the current left. In my opinion, the only option left for seriously social change is to completely disregard the old left, its comcerns, culture, organisations, and social base for something totally new. I guess there would have to be some sort of clear distinction drawn between this movement and the old left, both to show the wider public that we don't have anything to do with them, and to show the old left they will never be welcome in this new movement
Instiutions get corrupted under greed incentive
Rogan is a useful idiot. My main exposure to him is another millionaire he supports because they're anti-establishment - Graham Hancock.
He was gracious enough to host a debate in which Hancock was trounced for having no evidence, but then went back and trumpeted the nonsense again, with attacks on the archaeologist who debated him (who made one small mistake, which he admitted and corrected).
He seems to embrace anything which can claim to be anti-establishment no matter how absurd it is.
Did he really said that?
Did he really said that?
Useful idiots are leftists
I agree with the vast majority of what was said and have no fundamental disagreements, except I think we need to remember that liberals are not really on the left. To me, being on the left means you are some sort of socialist. Liberals are not all bad, but it disservice us to be beholden to a group of people who think very similarly to those who are considered right wing. I'd could understand including SocDems as leftist
i would say that we need more red left and less pink "left"
and what is that supposed to mean?
This is beautiful
0:50 god we live in the stupidest fucking timeline
It doesn't help to confront populism with populism. I don't care how many noteworthy intellectuals like Chantal Mouffe think it should work, it doesn't. The only thing that happens when two populist parties confront each other is populist polarization, which inevitebly leads into democratic backsliding. Take the case of hungary for example, there you had two populist blocs going at each other, both rethorically denying the legitimacy of the other and of elections they lost, both undermining any possibility of crossing the ile, finding compromise and working together for the benefit of the country. No matter who would have won this conflict there would be no way back into a stable democracy. In that case the populist right of the Fidesz party around Victor Orban won - for frankly the right wing is better at populism - but for the state of hungarian democracy it wouldn't have mattered. When confronted with democracy eroding populism you can't fight it with more populism, you need to combat it with a different vision, one that deepens democracy instead of undermining it. Populism is no solution! Doing f all like the democrats are trying, doesn't work either, I'll give you that much.
What do you suggest, then? Maybe your populists just weren't very smart.
What does this different, more deeper vision of democracy look like?
@BigToody That depends on the given political system that you are living under. In general democracy can be deepened in a couple of ways.
- extensive: extend the societal realms wherein democracy is applied (e.g. a stakeholder princeple wherein not only capital driven firms and there shareholders, alongside with the local government - all these groups tend to gain from industrial activity - but also the other stakeholders, say people who live there get to suffer the pollution noise and whatever else is associated with that activity)
- inclusive: include people into democratic decision making that are currently being excluded (as simple as it sounds: could be voting rights for young adults, could be the extension of local level voting rights to foreign workers in your community, could be easier access to voting in general)
- intrinsic: the democratization of the institutions themselves (institutions are arbiters of stability, yet democracy is a system build on change through the mandate of the people - this is an obvious conflict of interest . Therefore one can try to make the institutions that govern everyday life themselves operate on democratic principles)
These are just a couple of ideas from the top of my head - there's thousands more options. Everything is contingent, nothing is necessary - we life under the exact circumstances that we have choosen and all of them can be changed.
@@Sebastian_Niedermeier so for extensive, those who are negatively impacted by certain activities get to have a more direct say in how those activities are managed and regulated? What happens if they say “no more! Get out of here!”? If it’s a necessary and beneficial project, wouldn’t listening to those voices be a hindrance? Like NIMBYism
@@BigToody That is a valid concern. Yet democracy is built on politicizing such conflicts - even the ones motivated by bigotterie or narcissistic self interests - and trying to find a compromise. Most of the times the majority of people is quite reasonable when they are actually being listened to, reasoned with, and most crucially of all involved in the decision making. This is achieved through the democratization of the process. When this isn't done and people feel like politics is something that happens to them instead of something that they are actively involved with designing, they loose their sense of self-actualizing, retreat into conspiracies, and look for a populist strongman who will restore the order that they no longer feel to belong to.
We shouldn't try to defend democracy as a never ending series of retreat battles that continuously loose ground, but instead go on the offensive by daring to deepen democracy even for the ones we disagree with.
This is mostly theoretical. Would require much work as well as the support of larger networks - like say the DNC. Individually there's only small things to be accomplished, in your local townhall, parent's teacher association or wherever forms of direct democracy already exist. Don't just attend, encourage others to do so - even when there isn't a specific issue you are concerned with. Democratic participation is like any activity conditioned through habitulization. The more people get into the habbit of participation, the louder the voices asking for more democracy will become.
Also question every institution. Why it is, what if does, and whether it wouldn't be better if it did things different. Every institution will present itself as necessary, natural and rational - they are not. All of them are the result of very specific historic power dynamics, all of them can be changed.
You don't have to do all of this all the time - do some of it sometimes, encourage others to follow suit. That's already a lot from what can be achieved from an individual level. And rather sooner than later you won't be individual anymore, for you are bound to meet people along the way and thus you have become part of a network.
Must be learning difficulty but i dont understand this, i need more structure, Im not following. And wth is "elite left"??
4:32 does he know Wasp literally just means white Anglo Saxon Protestant? In other words, the original founders of America? And still the majority in the country to this day? (Albeit by much smaller margins)
Talks about the Narodniks, elides the Bolsheviks, who actually won.
@@Novalarke Technically bolsheviks weren’t populist cause they relied mostly on worker, not the peasants who made up the vast majority of Russian population at the time.
If you call murdering tens of millions of people "winning".
As of now that socialism has collapsed, the future is capitalism. Thanks for your video!!
The future will be brief because material conditions will shift so drastically that the capitalist mode of production will no longer be viable even if we wanted it.
No, democratic representation has collapsed, and fascism is the future.
Economics did not get us here.
We are here because the citizens got complacent about involvement in government, letting the corrupt take too much power (as they do both under capitalism and under socialism).
The corrupt win because they are the ones willing to put in the work.
We have late stage capitalism, and anti-socialist rhetoric BECAUSE we have lost our democracy, not the other way around.