View all notes
[...] The Berlin Wall [...] signified that capitalism was not the only option, that an alternative to it, although a failed one, existed. By contrast, the walls that we see rising today [...] don't stand for the division between capitalism and communism but for a division that is strictly immanent to the global capitalist order. [...]
in the next sentence he describes it as "a nice Hegelian move" which is the most Zizek thing ever
[...] Why then should the left leave this field of nationalist passions to the radical right [...] Could the radical left not mobilize these same nationalist passions as a mighty weapons against the dominant force in today's global society, the increasingly unfettered reign of rootless financial capital? [...]
Right-wing populism thrives because the world of the working classes has been destroyed by corporate capitalism and has become devalued by cultural progressive elites who, from the 1980s onwards, focused their intellectual and political energy on sexual and cultural minorities, thus generating fierce culture wars. Once the world of the working class was destroyed and spurned, it could be restored through promises of lost racial, religious and ethnic privileges.
Trumps election is a wake-up call for the left throughout the world. However polarized the worlds of the cultural elites and the conservative working-class may have become, the left has no choice but to re-engage with the moral world of lives that have been torn asunder by the rippling effects of colonialism and capitalism. Short of that, in the long run, liberalism may be doomed to extinction.
[...] As Arjun Appadurai observed a decade ago, 'the nation state has been steadily reduced to the fiction of its ethnos as the last cultural resource over which it may exercise full domination'. The unintended consequence of macroeconomic policies following the mantra 'there is no alternative' is that identity politics have taken over the centre of European politics. The market and the internet have proven to be powerful forces for increasing the choices of individuals, but they have eroded the social cohesion of Western societies because both reinforce the inclination of individuals to satisfy their natural preferences, such as preferring contact with people like themselves and staying away from strangers. We live in a world that is more connected but also less integrated. Globalization connects while disconnecting. [...]
[...] the Enlightenment, in which the idea of the European Union is intellectually rooted, demands universal citizenship. But universal citizenship requires one of two things to happen: either poor and dysfunctional countries have to become places in which it is worthwhile to live, or Europe has to open its borders to everybody. Neither is going to happen anytime soon, if ever. Today the world is populated by many failed states nobody wants to be a citizen of, and Europe does not have the capacity, nor will its citizens ever agree, to keep the borders open.
The culture of resistance to capital has, for some, mutated into a culture of revolt against globalization, migration and human rights. How we got here is not just a story of neoliberalism's economic failure, but the collapse of a narrative. In turn, the paralysis of the left lies not in its failure to advance economic criticisms of free market economics, but in its failure to engage properly in the narrative battle the ultra-right is waging. [...]
If life for working-class people felt better in the 1990s than the 1980s, it was because both credit and cheap Chinese goods offset the primary problem: stagnating wages. That globalization and financial deregulation are essentially positive for working people became the overt message of social democracy.
Neoliberalism unleashed numerous structural transformations. The principal ones were: the offshoring of productive industries; the restructuring of corporations into a 'value chain' of smaller companies; cutting taxes to shrink the state; the privatization of public services; and the financialization of everyday life. [...]
good summary
[...] Blair and Gordon Brown staked everything on financialization. Deregulation of the credit market would allow even the poor to take part in the asset-price bubble. The booming finance industry would generate high tax revenues, which would be redistributed to the working class through welfare payments, in-work tax credits, revived spending on the NHS, and mass access to university education. On the eve of the financial crash up to seven million people, one third of all households, were receiving some form of payment from the state.
When the finance system collapsed, so did this finance-based ameliorative project of social democracy. In its place came austerity. [...] And as the safety net broke, so did consent for inward migration.
[...] Even if trade and deregulation may produce benefits for a nation 'in the aggregate', these benefits are unfairly distributed, which is why there are always winners and losers. And those who are not among the winners know full well after twenty-fie years that competition is increasing, social and financial stress is on the rise, and that the formulae contained in the Sunday sermons of the preachers of globalization are nothing but hot air.