Socialism or Barbarism

In his collection of essays, How Did We Get Into This Mess?, George Monbiot notes that corporate power tends to overwhelm any opposition.

So few are the countervailing voices ... that the dominate forms of power remain almost unchallenged.

Take, for example, the ideology that now governs our lives. Not only is it seldom challenged; it is seldom even identified. ... What greater power can there be than to operate namelessly?

Monbiot goes on to identify our time as the Age of Loneliness and offers solace to his fellow travelers.

So if you don't fit in; if you feel at odds with the world; if your identity is troubled and frayed; if you feel lost and ashamed, it could be because you have retained the human values you were supposed to have discarded. You are a deviant. Be proud.

Neal Gabler argues that technology is not producing polarization so much as the segmentation of society.

Social media have helped create an America in which there is not only very little national conversation, common experience, sense of community or even very much desire to cross the boundaries that divide us; they have helped create an America of 300 million separate entities, each chronicling its own individual activities. You don’t have to imagine what this does to our politics. You’re living it. 

Under these circumstances, a healthy political system cannot really exist. I am not sure healthy individuals can either. [Virginia] Heffernan ... say[s] that in this digital age of non-stop communication, “we’re all more alone than ever.” That may be the most profound and enduring effect of the media on our politics. We are now so divided we may not be able to unite; we are so divided we live within an aching metaphysical malaise of unconnectedness. We have more “friends” than ever, but feel more friendless. 

Ours is an extremely discontented country today, and a seemingly discontented world, too. We usually chalk it up to economic stress, inequality, globalization, disempowerment — the usual suspects. But that media-induced malaise that afflicts us, may be the anxiety of loneliness at a time when not only we have lost one another, we’ve lost our sense of self, the one anchor that might root us in the storm. We are adrift — some from the digital world and some within that world — and so are our politics.

Out of this fragmentation comes a need for answers -- a need for someone who can speak for those who feel left behind in what John Feffer calls America B.

Falling behind economically and feeling betrayed by politicians on both sides of the aisle, America B might have moved to the left if the United States had a strong socialist tradition. In the 2016 primary campaign, many of the economically anxious did, in fact, support Bernie Sanders, particularly the younger offspring of America A fearful of being deported to America B. ... [H]owever, America B has always been more about rugged individualism than class solidarity. Its denizens would rather buy a lottery ticket and pray for a big payout than rely on a handout from Washington (Medicare and Social Security aside). [The Republican nominee], politically speaking, is their Powerball ticket.

Above all, the inhabitants of America B are angry. They’re disgusted with politics as usual in Washington and the hypocritical, sanctimonious political elite that goes with it. They’re incensed by how the wealthy have effectively seceded from American society with their gated estates and offshore accounts. And they’ve focused their resentment on those they see as having taken their jobs: immigrants, people of color, women. They’re so desperate for someone who “tells it like it is” that they’ll look the other way when it comes to [the nominee’s] inextricable links to the very elite who did so much to widen the gap between the two Americas in the first place.

Feffer says this year's election, with an expected Democratic win, won't resolve these issues.

The real change will come when a more sophisticated politician, with an authentic political machine, sets out to woo America B. Perhaps the Democratic Party will decide to return to its more populist, mid-century roots. Perhaps the Republican Party will abandon its commitment to entitlement programs for the 1%. 

More likely, a much more ominous political force will emerge from the shadows. If and when that new, neo-fascist party fields its charismatic presidential candidate, that will be the most important election of our lives.

 All the more reason, according to Daniel Denvir, to insist on a socialist alternative.

If nobody knows who the bad guys are, the left’s job is to name them. Clinton will likely defeat [the Republican nominee] in November. Defeating [neo-fascism], however, will require a powerful vision for transformative change. Instability will only increase as global warming disrupts the ecological foundation of people’s lives and millions of refugees and migrants flee a swath of disintegrating nation states stretching from Africa through the Middle East to South Asia. Racist and xenophobic hate can’t be defeated unless the cresting anger is organized to fight the super-rich and not one another.