{"id":9747,"date":"2021-01-18T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-01-18T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=151177"},"modified":"2021-01-18T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-01-18T00:00:00","slug":"precarity-populism-and-prospects-for-a-green-democratic-transformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/01\/18\/precarity-populism-and-prospects-for-a-green-democratic-transformation\/","title":{"rendered":"Precarity, populism, and prospects for a green democratic transformation"},"content":{"rendered":"
2\/ Fighting inequality as a neoliberal fallacy<\/em><\/p>\n The second weakness of the Green Democratic Transformation<\/a> project is its narrow understanding of social justice in terms of fighting inequalities. Since pundits and academics drew public attention to the spectacular growth of inequalities in the West, social justice has been approached as a matter of fighting inequality via wealth redistribution. Although this is often presented as a radical opposition to neoliberal capitalism, the departure from neoliberal convention is only apparent. Thinking in terms of inequality engages a logic of comparison between individuals and presents the idea of social justice in individualistic terms \u2013 as a matter of personal circumstances, of private wealth. Such focus on individual circumstances is a trademark of the neoliberal mentality. Thus, even as we engage in the worthy struggle against inequality and exclusion, we in fact remain captives of the neoliberal imaginary, which views society as composed by individuals in charge of their lives. This eliminates the notion of collective wellbeing that has always been fundamental for Socialism as it espoused a solidaristic<\/em> economy without emphasizing either equality or prosperity. (It might be worth remembering that Marx did not advocate economic equality in his vision of a just social order and that the totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe created societies that were egalitarian but not solidaristic). A privately wealthy society, even if fairly equal, can still be publicly poor if essential public services are missing or deficient in funds (as John Galbraith observed<\/a> back in 1958).<\/p>\n Typically, pledges to fight inequality invoke the policy formula of growth-and-redistribution that ensured the (relative) equality and prosperity of the post-WWII welfare state. However, this prosperity \u2013 obtained via intensified production and consumption \u2013 has proved toxic for the environment. This is why it is implausible to promise both meaningful action on the Green transition and \u2018unprecedented prosperity\u2019 \u2013 as the Green New Deal vouches. We should not count on working people\u2019s credulity, expecting them to \u2018buy into\u2019 facile political promises for prosperity and<\/em> ecological action. Even when people are ideologically misguided, they are not stupid \u2013 and it is a grave political error to assume that they are.<\/p>\n 3\/ Democracy as a neoliberal fantasy<\/em><\/p>\n The third weakness of the Green Democratic Transition platform concerns the status of democracy: it relies on democratization as a strategy for progressive politics. However, in the context of neoliberal capitalism the economization of society is so thorough that, as Wendy Brown observes<\/a>, the demos itself has disintegrated into bits of human capital, while the state actively produces voters as economic actors. As people\u2019s dependence on the health of global capitalism is translated into policy preferences through the rituals of democratic representation, democracy becomes a neoliberal fantasy<\/a>; democracy is increasingly being deployed as a tool for perpetuating neoliberal capitalism.<\/p>\n The strong capital-labour alliance against the Green transition, the narrow interpretation of social justice as countering inequality, and the erosion of the democratic foundation of politics combine to generate a condition I have called a \u2018meta-crisis\u2019<\/a> (crisis of the crisis) of democratic capitalism: even as the neoliberal hegemony has entered a crisis, transformation does not take place. Society is trapped in a state of inflammation and engaged in perpetual crisis-management. Is there a way out of this disastrous conundrum? To reboot progressive politics, we need to adjust our diagnosis of the current historical conjuncture.<\/p>\n The outrage against inequality has been the rallying cry for the Left. However, this strategy, as US presidential elections<\/a>in 2016 and 2020 have revealed, has been based on a diagnostic error. Tellingly, the states where Trump made inroads among the working class (Alaska, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Iowa, Utah, and Michigan), had seen the smallest increases in inequality nationwide since 1989, but their troubled economies have not generated good and stable employment. The Republican Party has been especially successful in Rust Belt states such as Michigan and Ohio, where poverty is not a result of skewed distribution of wealth, but of a broader industrial decay caused by automation and the offshoring of manufacturing to countries with cheaper labor, which has led to urban decay and rising criminality.<\/p>\nThe social question of our time: the massification of precarity<\/strong><\/h2>\n