Sometimes I think that capitalism is like when you are looking at old photographs and you see how thin you were, drastically emaciated, due to depression and loneliness and instability, but you do not recognize the danger, nor the cause, nor the actuality of your wretchedness. Sometimes you only see the truth after years of quiet disconnection from that reality or time or place or condition. When you live under the labyrinth of capitalism it not just seems like the normal state, but you don’t even realize or know it exists. It disappears into itself, enmeshes you within its web, and filters all experience through its lens. Much can be discussed about the current failures of the left, globally, since the second half of the twentieth century — A half century of collapse, failure, obscurity, and divisiveness has grasped socialism and its adherents in a death spiral since Hungary, Afghanistan, and the Wall. The theories and practice that Karl announced as scientific, descended in the ‘West’ into a series of fragmented cults, fan-clubs, and neoliberal fellow travelers. To the dismay of all those who wish for a ‘better tomorrow’, those of us who attempt to see through the web of capitalism can barely extract themselves from it and this sordid history that has befallen these struggles against the system.
It is to be dwelled upon that the villeins of medieval Europe and Japan had a similar disposition to the fog of their condition. Although, in the end, that condition ended, most common people did not even realize its extinction until it was long passed away. It seems the conditions related to class contradictions and class conflict fade into the next phase. Struggle exists to create these moments of transition, but the holy wars and invention, purposeful uses of thought and effort, are accompanied by natural surprises and horrors; the death plague from central Asia or the chance of unknown trade winds hurdling a Genoese sailor to the Bahamas. Natural chance, and concerted effort and conflict all culminated towards the change from feudal societies to capitalist ones — This is not a denial of the material conditions that in fact propelled these changes, but a reflection on how the web of the social order one lives under only seems to crack when society has weakened. Pressure from the heavens or from microscopic organisms seem to heat the class struggle, like a hammer to iron.
We are living in a century that was described at its birth as an ‘ahistorical time’ — history was done and dead as Fukuyama quipped. Obviously that prediction was ominously wrong. The lords and kings and capitalists of the great European empires at the end of the 19th century believed that global commerce and relations and that great post-Napoleonic peace had ushered in a time without war or massive strife. The most educated class in the social, political, artistic and metaphysical arts could not see the social earthquake among the serfs of St. Petersburg, the crushing of the Chinese Empire by the restored Japan, or the tension of the tribes of Arabia. Fissures were growing amongst them and then, suddenly, they shattered; collapsing the European powers into a thirty year civil war that would shatter their empires and lead to today.
The left today is crawling and struggling to see the cracks and warping of our current condition. The world is on fire, they say. Clashes between indigenous people and their colonizers are on the rise, the neoliberal order is collapsing or turning to increased surveillance and authoritarianism. The surviving socialist societies across the globe lend little imagination except for warnings and dying dreams. Increasingly, corporations look as if the East India Trading Company has arisen from its hellish grave. The left must break through the web of capitalism and colonialism and bigotry that has infected the world and itself. Reaction is the word of the day, while emancipation seems far — as the seas rise and Tuvalu and San Marco sink. The Leviathan of capitalism is swallowing its tale as it drags the biosphere towards the rift.
I think the march towards a place or time after capitalism will come in slow realizations. The people of Chile have known that the stratification of their economic condition was wrong. They knew that the dictators of old had led them to this place; that men from Chicago had descended upon the Andes like locusts to wheat. The cracks that came, emerged from the increase in subway costs. And as the students protested and were beaten, realization befell the people of Chile. They knew the truth, and always had that truth within their life, but the crack shattered the fog, the web, of their condition.
There is some hope that in the center of the rotting empire of the United States, where you have infinite choice, but only if you have the money or health to decide, cracks are springing apparent. The capitalist class seems to have made a grave error; by stripping the weak social welfare state from the peoples of America; using the banshee and shadow puppets of racism and classism, the ruling class has inadvertently ignited a rise in both the far right and far left. The left is as close to power as it has been since the thirties and the right is increasingly skeptical of capitalism as an ally to reaction. The results of this rolling contradiction and struggle are not clear. The fog is not lifted as of yet and the forces of the system in power are mightily struggling against populism, no matter its origin or intent. Some are resorting to tactical alliances with the far right to maintain some power, and others are finding liberal avatars to coat their power with a veneer of Mickey Mouse and apple pie, patriotism and religion. The left must continue to unveil these contradictions when they can find them; they must confront power and internally work to self-critique haziness of thought and action. I hope they are not too late.
This is a short reflection on more feelings than theory. I organize in Pennsylvania and Washington, DC for DSA and other local organizations. Check out my incoherent Twitter at twitter.com/pedagogyofjim.
