New year, new rigour: setting out priorities
The year had barely begun when the US abducted Nicolas Maduro, and it’s not as if things have become less chaotic and violent since. The American Republic has sent in its paras to scoop up immigrants and beat (and kill) protesters, the Islamic Republic is massively repressing protests in Iran, Trump is facing down his own Fed, and is trying to gobble up Greenland.
But we’re not here to recap the news – and never have been. Our programming, such as it is, is to look widely, delve deeply, and most of all, situate our moment in history. To that end, we’d like to announce our thematic priorities for the year – and maybe beyond – which will orient much of what we do (and read, think and say).
STATE CAPITALISM
If neoliberalism is over, how new is the new? Capital can’t stand on its own two feet so what form of dependency on and interlinking with the state has this generated? Is this a ‘crisis of valorisation’ and if so, how is it changing society? How will the next crisis be, and what will be its attempted resolution? Is China everyone’s future?
THE PRE-POLITICAL
If society is increasingly fragmented and atomised, what tasks impose themselves? Is there a need to rebuild society? Is this even possible – and if so what bases can it be rebuilt on? Is there a political short-cut to solving pre-political problems?
MILITARISM & WAR
Nothing ever happens, they say, but this is increasingly not tenable. How dangerous is contemporary international disorder? Where are conflicts likely to occur and what will they look like? What is the role of new regional powers in provoking conflict? What changes is militarism generating within societies? What does the cause of peace look like?
IRRATIONALISM AND UNFREEDOM
After a long abeyance, are ideas of hierarchy returning? What are the primary forms of counter-Enlightenment thought today? What political forms do they take, if at all? Is high-tech illiteracy our future? Is there an epistemic crisis?
POLITICAL RECOMBINATION
What does a political scene of ‘thin’ ideologies look like? Is all politics populist and hybrid today? What revolts against the established order are going on? What are the impediments to the emergence of a social majority for change?
Naturally, these themes overlap and inform each other – state capitalism may further militarism and vice-versa, just as social fragmentation may lead people to seek recourse in irrationalist ideas, throwing up strange politics. But the point is that these touchstones should help orient thinking about politics, broadly conceived, in the 2nd quarter of the 21st century. It may be an awkward way to put it, but the point is to emphasise how far we now are from the 20th century. If anything, it’s like we’re back in the 19th century, but without the legacy of the Enlightenment right behind us: imperial rivalry, resource wars, disorganised politics, and a growing presence of hierarchical and racialist notions; but instead of demands for greater democracy, more freedom, those ideas are either withered beyond recognition or subjected to deconstruction or ridicule.
But as we have often said, our times are unique (thankfully) so we shouldn’t dwell too much on historical analogies…
(Anyway, if you do think we need to deal with an aspect of these themes that we’ve overlooked, do get in touch)
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Here's what’s coming up in February
Alex and Lee do a double-header on the ideological bases of Trump’s foreign policy:
JF Drolet on the US paleocons and the European New Right, the tension between isolationism and expansionism, civilisational chauvinism and the coveting of Greenland.
Juan Rojas on the emerging Donroe Doctrine, US hemispheric policy, the risk of Venezuela’s fragmentation, and the Miami Mafia’s designs on Cuba.
In the Reading Club we delve deeper into what illiberalism really is – a ‘thin’ ideology that doesn’t conform to 20th century standards but nonetheless unifies various right-wing and populist strands.
Alex Gourevitch talks to Paul Gomberg on why racism cannot be eradicated without overcoming capitalism, and the limits of contemporary anti-racist arguments.
And Ran Helibrunn on the abolition of queer theory and its failure to account for sex.
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