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The Old is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born: From Progressive Neoliberalism to Trump and Beyond
Neoliberalism is fracturing, but what will emerge in its wake?
Across the globe politics as usual are being rejected and faith in neoliberalism is fracturing beyond repair. Leading political theorist Nancy Fraser, in conversation with Jacobin publisher Bhaskar Sunkara, dissects neoliberalism's current crisis and argues that we might wrest new futures from its ruins.
The global political, ecological, economic, and social breakdown--symbolized, but not caused, by Trump's election--has destroyed faith that neoliberal capitalism is beneficial to the majority. Fraser explores how this faith was built through the late twentieth century by balancing two central tenets: recognition (who deserves rights) and distribution (who deserves income). When these began to fray, new forms of outsider populist politics emerged on the left and the right. These, Fraser argues, are symptoms of the larger crisis of hegemony for neoliberalism, a moment when, as Gramsci had it, "the old is dying and the new cannot be born."
Explored further in an accompanying interview with Jacobin publisher Bhaskar Sunkara, Fraser argues that we now have the opportunity to build progressive populism into an emancipatory social force, one that can claim a new hegemony.
Across the globe politics as usual are being rejected and faith in neoliberalism is fracturing beyond repair. Leading political theorist Nancy Fraser, in conversation with Jacobin publisher Bhaskar Sunkara, dissects neoliberalism's current crisis and argues that we might wrest new futures from its ruins.
The global political, ecological, economic, and social breakdown--symbolized, but not caused, by Trump's election--has destroyed faith that neoliberal capitalism is beneficial to the majority. Fraser explores how this faith was built through the late twentieth century by balancing two central tenets: recognition (who deserves rights) and distribution (who deserves income). When these began to fray, new forms of outsider populist politics emerged on the left and the right. These, Fraser argues, are symptoms of the larger crisis of hegemony for neoliberalism, a moment when, as Gramsci had it, "the old is dying and the new cannot be born."
Explored further in an accompanying interview with Jacobin publisher Bhaskar Sunkara, Fraser argues that we now have the opportunity to build progressive populism into an emancipatory social force, one that can claim a new hegemony.
63 pages, Paperback
First published April 16, 2019
About the author
Nancy Fraser
110 books369 followersNancy Fraser is an American critical theorist, currently the Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Political and Social Science and professor of philosophy at The New School in New York City. Fraser earned her PhD in philosophy from the CUNY Graduate Center and taught in the philosophy department at Northwestern University for many years before moving to the New School.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author with this name in the Goodreads database.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author with this name in the Goodreads database.
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July 6, 2024
The defeatism of Western Left academia…
Preamble:
--My initial excuse to review this limited book-essay was to actually review a deeper academic article by the same author, which I’ll post in the comments below (Note: I wish Goodreads also catalogued academic articles, so they can be reviewed and popularized outside academic silos).
--However, this book’s limitations offered an opportunity to flesh out something that has plagued my mind and kept me with only one foot in academia.
Highlights:
--First, I’ll summarize Fraser’s book. In considering the battle for political “hegemony” (a little Antonio Gramsci, see later), Fraser starts with:
i) Distribution: how society should distribute resources (esp. economic class).
ii) Recognition: how society should recognize social status (social hierarchies/identities).
--Next, Fraser applies this to the pre-Trump Western hegemony of “Progressive Neoliberalism” (esp. US’s Bill Clinton/Obama, and their lapdog Britain’s Blair):
i) Distribution: the “Neoliberalism” part is a continuation of the prior Milton Friedman/Reagan “trickle-down economics” dismantling the welfare state to funnel more resources to the top. Bill Clinton further deregulated Finance Capitalism (Wall Street) with caused escalating speculation (ex. Silicon Valley’s Dot Com bubble).
ii) Recognition: the “Progressive” rhetoric (but not substance) allowed “Neoliberalism” to continue its hegemony by repackaging it as inclusive of various identities, coopting social movements (feminism/antiracism/multiculturalism/environmentalism/gender) into Hollywood fantasies while enabling further Financialization (ex. “inclusive” predatory lending, carbon trading, etc.). Equality was neutralized as meritocracy, to diversify the top of social hierarchies. This broke the New Deal alliance that paired (relatively) redistributive recognition with (relatively) redistributive distribution.
--Finally, Fraser proposes the “counter hegemonic” force as populism, coming in 2 forms:
1) Reactionary populism (i.e. Trump): volatile leader and ruse, still reliant on Republican Party.
i) Distribution: rhetoric of reviving US industries and infrastructure projects
ii) Recognition: inclusion via exclusion (“white working class”)
2) Progressive populism (i.e. Bernie, Corbyn): has the redistributive substance to challenge “Progressive Neoliberalism”, but still too close to the enemy risking sabotage (which the 2020 Biden election confirmed once again).
i) Distribution: redistributive
ii) Recognition: redistributive; how to evolve a New Deal alliance were race/social identities and economic class are not zero sum (i.e. not casting away “half” of Trump voters as “deplorables”)? How to prevent liberal cooptation (ex. Hillary Clinton's “lean in” feminism vs. Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto).
Lowlights:
1) Target audience?:
i) General public? For a book so short and marketed as an intro, it’s not particularly accessible. It’s revealing that I’d recommend (for the US public) a politician over an academic, in this case Bernie’s 2023 It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism (despite being a full-length book, it flows easily as Bernie has set the foundations in his campaigns).
…and for a big picture intro on theory: Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails
ii) Academics? Is the theory foundational? Thankfully, Fraser does consider more material structures (unlike the meandering speculations of Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?), but this still pales in comparison to Fraser’s academic article (so see the end of this review if you feel I’m bashing Fraser too much!).
iii) Activists? After the academic deconstruction, how much space was given for constructive alternatives? Just further critiques that the Left needs a programmatic vision and cannot rely solely on social movements (need unions/parties etc.).
…Why the academic defeatism? Are the academic expectations so utopic and far-removed from material conditions? Here is Fraser throwing her hands in the air at the lack of constructive alternatives; one wonders what social science academics do with all their time… [emphases added]
...Channeling Vijay Prashad, how the hell is “postcapitalist” a “programmatic vision”? How defeatist are leftists, to use such a vague word that literally covers anything and everything that can come after capitalism? “Socialism or barbarism”, as Rosa Luxemburg reminds us while resisting capitalism/imperialism’s first World War.
2) The West (and the rest?):
--A clue to the academic defeatism is its Western/Global North context. It’s one thing to start with US domestic politics when you are campaigning as a US politician like Bernie. It’s another when you’re an academic writing about “The Old is Dying” (surely this refers to US-led capitalism, which has a global context).
--If we take a geopolitical economy approach, Fraser’s foundations seem suspiciously like David Harvey’s A Brief History of Neoliberalism, centering the rise of Neoliberalism on US domestic affairs (for Harvey it was New York City budget crisis 1974-75) rather than on global geopolitics (The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South) and geopolitical economy (Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present).
--I had a good chuckle during the interview at the end of the book. The interviewer is Bhaskar Sunkara, who authored the similarly-tepid 2019 The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality; he should have just named it “The Postcapitalist Manifesto”, but I guess NATO-loving Paul Mason stole the thunder in his 2015 Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future.
…Anyways, Sunkara actually prompts the global context when asking [emphases added]:
…Since this book’s publication, COVID-19 has further revealed this prejudiced Western Left defeatism. Those Global South countries/states (Vietnam/Cuba/Laos/Kerala) that actually managed to better handle COVID-19 despite poorer economics (no thanks to imperialist terms of trade etc.: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions) must just be “authoritarian” after all…?
-Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism.
3) Commodification of Academia?:
--I hear this from academics I respect, where they do not feel like they have the right to propose “their” alternatives, with the assumption that it’s up to “the people” (to “spontaneously” figure it out?).
…Let’s start with academia’s commodification of “intellectual property”: you didn’t just construct the alternative ideas all in your mind (and if you just sat in your ivory tower navel-gazing, then that would be the root problem), and now you somehow own the ideas…
…Part of social research surely involves engaging with “the people” in the real-world, and such engagements are never so sterile where both sides leave unaffected. That’s the nature of ideas: they flourish (and evolve) when they are shared (this is a messy social process, not an instantaneous market exchange between two strangers! Debt: The First 5,000 Years) and they wilt when they are not shared (like residing in the silos of academia).
...Haven’t these trendy Western-Left academics all read Pedagogy of the Oppressed? i.e. the distinction between:
i) “Banking model”: teacher depositing info into students, vs.
ii) “Problem-posing model”: dialogue between teacher-students and student-teachers (students as agents/co-creators, teacher as facilitator).
--A social researcher is privileged with the time/opportunities to engage with numerous groups, to facilitate/synthesize/play with the ideas that emerge, and then gift this back to the participants and the world.
…What is the point of “leftist intellectuals”, if they are not using their allotted time to extract/synthesize/amplify the alternatives being forged by those busy struggling on the front-lines? How do you have the right to critique those on the front-lines (as if this part is purely “empirical”/“objective”), yet there’s nothing constructive to synthesize and gift back?
4) The New Intellectual?:
--Of course there will always be the concern of intellectuals abusing their positions of privilege and imposing their views. But not actively using your positions of privilege only reinforces those who intentionally abuse their privileges. Real-world contradictions are not neatly resolved through crude avoidance.
--To unpack this further, Vijay presents his approach to social research (leaving academia proper to direct the Tricontinental Institutive for Social Research) in this lecture titled You Can’t Know the World Unless You’re Trying to Change It; this link is time-stamped to start at Vijay playing with the distinctions made by Gramsci (coming full circle):
i) “Traditional intellectual”: serving (and communicating the framing of) elite class interest (while universalizing it as “objective”), via the authority of established institutions.
ii) “Organic intellectual”: serving (and communicating the framing of) their own class interest, via their own skills/class recognition etc. However, every class has intellectuals organically rooted to their class (Vijay contends that academia romanticizes this group and omits the “new intellectual”).
iii) “New intellectual”: serving the “political party of the people” (distinctly lower classes; Gramsci was prominent in the Italian Communist Party after all), the “permanent persuader” first researches by engaging with people to draw out the “contradictory consciousness” between lived experiences (may be reflected by organic intellectuals) vs. false consciousness propagated by traditional intellectuals, then (crucially) “elaborates [the people’s] common sense into philosophy” (rather than merely imposing your views) and “presents it back” to them to “see if [it] resonates” with their struggles (i.e. an end goal of liberation).
…Otherwise, Western academia is so often funded by corporate foundations/military/intelligence so it can be abused for planning profit-seeking/surveillance/counter-intelligence against the people; this is so prevalent we don’t even have to dive into rabbit holes like Patriotic Betrayal: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Secret Campaign to Enroll American Students in the Crusade Against Communism…
-another Vijay/Gramsci video
--For foundational theories and alternatives, try:
-Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present
-Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
-A People’s Green New Deal
…see comments below for rest of the review (reviewing Fraser’s academic article).
Preamble:
--My initial excuse to review this limited book-essay was to actually review a deeper academic article by the same author, which I’ll post in the comments below (Note: I wish Goodreads also catalogued academic articles, so they can be reviewed and popularized outside academic silos).
--However, this book’s limitations offered an opportunity to flesh out something that has plagued my mind and kept me with only one foot in academia.
Highlights:
--First, I’ll summarize Fraser’s book. In considering the battle for political “hegemony” (a little Antonio Gramsci, see later), Fraser starts with:
i) Distribution: how society should distribute resources (esp. economic class).
ii) Recognition: how society should recognize social status (social hierarchies/identities).
--Next, Fraser applies this to the pre-Trump Western hegemony of “Progressive Neoliberalism” (esp. US’s Bill Clinton/Obama, and their lapdog Britain’s Blair):
i) Distribution: the “Neoliberalism” part is a continuation of the prior Milton Friedman/Reagan “trickle-down economics” dismantling the welfare state to funnel more resources to the top. Bill Clinton further deregulated Finance Capitalism (Wall Street) with caused escalating speculation (ex. Silicon Valley’s Dot Com bubble).
ii) Recognition: the “Progressive” rhetoric (but not substance) allowed “Neoliberalism” to continue its hegemony by repackaging it as inclusive of various identities, coopting social movements (feminism/antiracism/multiculturalism/environmentalism/gender) into Hollywood fantasies while enabling further Financialization (ex. “inclusive” predatory lending, carbon trading, etc.). Equality was neutralized as meritocracy, to diversify the top of social hierarchies. This broke the New Deal alliance that paired (relatively) redistributive recognition with (relatively) redistributive distribution.
--Finally, Fraser proposes the “counter hegemonic” force as populism, coming in 2 forms:
1) Reactionary populism (i.e. Trump): volatile leader and ruse, still reliant on Republican Party.
i) Distribution: rhetoric of reviving US industries and infrastructure projects
ii) Recognition: inclusion via exclusion (“white working class”)
2) Progressive populism (i.e. Bernie, Corbyn): has the redistributive substance to challenge “Progressive Neoliberalism”, but still too close to the enemy risking sabotage (which the 2020 Biden election confirmed once again).
i) Distribution: redistributive
ii) Recognition: redistributive; how to evolve a New Deal alliance were race/social identities and economic class are not zero sum (i.e. not casting away “half” of Trump voters as “deplorables”)? How to prevent liberal cooptation (ex. Hillary Clinton's “lean in” feminism vs. Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto).
Lowlights:
1) Target audience?:
i) General public? For a book so short and marketed as an intro, it’s not particularly accessible. It’s revealing that I’d recommend (for the US public) a politician over an academic, in this case Bernie’s 2023 It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism (despite being a full-length book, it flows easily as Bernie has set the foundations in his campaigns).
…and for a big picture intro on theory: Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails
ii) Academics? Is the theory foundational? Thankfully, Fraser does consider more material structures (unlike the meandering speculations of Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?), but this still pales in comparison to Fraser’s academic article (so see the end of this review if you feel I’m bashing Fraser too much!).
iii) Activists? After the academic deconstruction, how much space was given for constructive alternatives? Just further critiques that the Left needs a programmatic vision and cannot rely solely on social movements (need unions/parties etc.).
…Why the academic defeatism? Are the academic expectations so utopic and far-removed from material conditions? Here is Fraser throwing her hands in the air at the lack of constructive alternatives; one wonders what social science academics do with all their time… [emphases added]
We know the economy has to be de-financialized and de-carbonized, that there needs to be planning and a big rise in the share of income that goes to the working classes and so on.…The word “socialism” is avoided in the book (heck, Bernie the US presidential candidate uses the S-word more!), in favor of “postcapitalist society”.
What we don’t know yet is whether some new, yet-to-be invented form of capitalism could satisfy those imperatives—or whether the only possible solution is a postcapitalist society, whether we want to call it socialist or something else.
...Channeling Vijay Prashad, how the hell is “postcapitalist” a “programmatic vision”? How defeatist are leftists, to use such a vague word that literally covers anything and everything that can come after capitalism? “Socialism or barbarism”, as Rosa Luxemburg reminds us while resisting capitalism/imperialism’s first World War.
2) The West (and the rest?):
--A clue to the academic defeatism is its Western/Global North context. It’s one thing to start with US domestic politics when you are campaigning as a US politician like Bernie. It’s another when you’re an academic writing about “The Old is Dying” (surely this refers to US-led capitalism, which has a global context).
--If we take a geopolitical economy approach, Fraser’s foundations seem suspiciously like David Harvey’s A Brief History of Neoliberalism, centering the rise of Neoliberalism on US domestic affairs (for Harvey it was New York City budget crisis 1974-75) rather than on global geopolitics (The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South) and geopolitical economy (Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present).
--I had a good chuckle during the interview at the end of the book. The interviewer is Bhaskar Sunkara, who authored the similarly-tepid 2019 The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality; he should have just named it “The Postcapitalist Manifesto”, but I guess NATO-loving Paul Mason stole the thunder in his 2015 Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future.
…Anyways, Sunkara actually prompts the global context when asking [emphases added]:
Today neoliberal capitalism governs virtually the entire world. It’s constantly morphing and it has been able to absorb crises—even the ones that seem terminal, like the recession in 2008. Where or why do you identify a crisis of hegemony— especially since you also see continuities in certain aspects of the economic agenda of the Trumps and the Obamas and the Clintons of the world?…And Fraser’s response [bold emphasis added]:
Just consider the explosion of antineoliberal movements throughout the world. We are usually focused on the right-wing populist variants, such as the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom; the rise of racist, anti-immigrant parties in northern and east-central Europe, Latin America, and Asia; and of course the victory of Trump in the United States. But that is only part of the story. We should not overlook left-wing antineoliberal forces, including the Corbyn surge in Britain, which has moved the Labour Party well to the left, the forces that have coalesced around Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise, Podemos in Spain, the early days of Syriza in Greece, and the Bernie Sanders campaign in the United States. Whether right or left, these are all cases in which people are saying that they don’t believe the reigning neoliberal narratives anymore. They don’t have faith in the established political parties in the center-left or center-right that promoted them. They want to try something completely different.Ah, there we go… global “left-wing antineoliberal forces” have all congregated in Europe and the US. I mean, isn’t that where all the trendy leftist theory come from? Paraphrasing Vijay once again, globalization of theory is one-way, with theory coming from the Global North and the Global South only presumed to produce guerilla manuals.
…Since this book’s publication, COVID-19 has further revealed this prejudiced Western Left defeatism. Those Global South countries/states (Vietnam/Cuba/Laos/Kerala) that actually managed to better handle COVID-19 despite poorer economics (no thanks to imperialist terms of trade etc.: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions) must just be “authoritarian” after all…?
-Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism.
3) Commodification of Academia?:
--I hear this from academics I respect, where they do not feel like they have the right to propose “their” alternatives, with the assumption that it’s up to “the people” (to “spontaneously” figure it out?).
…Let’s start with academia’s commodification of “intellectual property”: you didn’t just construct the alternative ideas all in your mind (and if you just sat in your ivory tower navel-gazing, then that would be the root problem), and now you somehow own the ideas…
…Part of social research surely involves engaging with “the people” in the real-world, and such engagements are never so sterile where both sides leave unaffected. That’s the nature of ideas: they flourish (and evolve) when they are shared (this is a messy social process, not an instantaneous market exchange between two strangers! Debt: The First 5,000 Years) and they wilt when they are not shared (like residing in the silos of academia).
...Haven’t these trendy Western-Left academics all read Pedagogy of the Oppressed? i.e. the distinction between:
i) “Banking model”: teacher depositing info into students, vs.
ii) “Problem-posing model”: dialogue between teacher-students and student-teachers (students as agents/co-creators, teacher as facilitator).
--A social researcher is privileged with the time/opportunities to engage with numerous groups, to facilitate/synthesize/play with the ideas that emerge, and then gift this back to the participants and the world.
…What is the point of “leftist intellectuals”, if they are not using their allotted time to extract/synthesize/amplify the alternatives being forged by those busy struggling on the front-lines? How do you have the right to critique those on the front-lines (as if this part is purely “empirical”/“objective”), yet there’s nothing constructive to synthesize and gift back?
4) The New Intellectual?:
--Of course there will always be the concern of intellectuals abusing their positions of privilege and imposing their views. But not actively using your positions of privilege only reinforces those who intentionally abuse their privileges. Real-world contradictions are not neatly resolved through crude avoidance.
--To unpack this further, Vijay presents his approach to social research (leaving academia proper to direct the Tricontinental Institutive for Social Research) in this lecture titled You Can’t Know the World Unless You’re Trying to Change It; this link is time-stamped to start at Vijay playing with the distinctions made by Gramsci (coming full circle):
i) “Traditional intellectual”: serving (and communicating the framing of) elite class interest (while universalizing it as “objective”), via the authority of established institutions.
ii) “Organic intellectual”: serving (and communicating the framing of) their own class interest, via their own skills/class recognition etc. However, every class has intellectuals organically rooted to their class (Vijay contends that academia romanticizes this group and omits the “new intellectual”).
iii) “New intellectual”: serving the “political party of the people” (distinctly lower classes; Gramsci was prominent in the Italian Communist Party after all), the “permanent persuader” first researches by engaging with people to draw out the “contradictory consciousness” between lived experiences (may be reflected by organic intellectuals) vs. false consciousness propagated by traditional intellectuals, then (crucially) “elaborates [the people’s] common sense into philosophy” (rather than merely imposing your views) and “presents it back” to them to “see if [it] resonates” with their struggles (i.e. an end goal of liberation).
…Otherwise, Western academia is so often funded by corporate foundations/military/intelligence so it can be abused for planning profit-seeking/surveillance/counter-intelligence against the people; this is so prevalent we don’t even have to dive into rabbit holes like Patriotic Betrayal: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Secret Campaign to Enroll American Students in the Crusade Against Communism…
-another Vijay/Gramsci video
--For foundational theories and alternatives, try:
-Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present
-Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
-A People’s Green New Deal
…see comments below for rest of the review (reviewing Fraser’s academic article).
April 30, 2020
Overviews the origins of neoliberalism and breaks down why it’s failing right now in a way that's insightful, if not especially groundbreaking. Fraser’s a sharp thinker, and especially helpful is her framing of the neoliberal project as made up of competing strands—reactionary, progressive, and hyperreactionary, each of which takes a different stance toward recognizing the legal rights and humanity of marginalized groups while sharing the same interest in maintaining an unequal distribution of wealth.
April 17, 2019
I love Nancy Fraser, but this is mostly a rehash of her previous work, particularly her essay on progressive neoliberalism in The Great Regression. This is only worth reading if you're unfamiliar with her work, or if you're doing exhaustive research into neoliberalism.
Fraser is bae though, and you should check out her other stuff (I also liked her essay in the New Left Review on Marx's hidden abode). I'm personally really looking forward to Capitalism: A Conversation in Critical Theory, which came out last summer.
Fraser is bae though, and you should check out her other stuff (I also liked her essay in the New Left Review on Marx's hidden abode). I'm personally really looking forward to Capitalism: A Conversation in Critical Theory, which came out last summer.
November 29, 2019
The evocative title of this essay cum booklet comes from the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, describing the awkward transition between the failure of one state and the rise of its successor; in this case, Fraser applies it – and Gramsci's concept of ideological hegemony to what she calls the "interregnum" in which we currently find ourselves – between the failure of the recent neoliberal hegemony and the as-yet-determined rise of a new consensus system uniting political, economic, cultural and ideological assumptions.
Fraser's contribution to this discussion is her analysis of what is exactly entailed what she calls "progressive neoliberalism." She describes two axes: distribution and recognition. Progressive neoliberalism, therefore, became hegemonic by uniting neoliberal distribution with egalitarian progressive recognition of women, people of color and sexual minorities. To do so, it defeated the previously existing New Deal coalition and reactionary neolibaeralism, which wedded the same neoliberal assumptions to racism, sexism and xenophobia.
Describing its rise and consolidation through the 1980s and '90s, followed by its decline and eventual collapse in the 2007-08 financial crisis, she identifies it not only as the rise of the finance economy, free trade and globalization – and the attendant rise of the precariat, low-wage service-sector jobs and attacks on unions – Fraser points out that its impending death is evidenced by the political upheavals taking place around the world; populists have assailed it from both right and left – and what will arise in its place is unclear. The old is dying, and the new cannot be born.
The question now, for those who value equality in both social and economic spheres, is whether a right-wing reactionary populism or a left-wing egalitarian populism will take its place. In 2016, she points out, Donald Trump won the presidency by promising a reactionary populism, and has since delivered reactionary neoliberalism, while the Democratic Party was split between the progressive populism of Bernie Sanders and the status quo progressive neoliberalism of Hillary Clinton.
She warns that attempts by the center-left or center-right to simply return to the status quo will merely prolong the awkward interregnum between the old and the new hegemonies – and the resulting uncertainty likely increases the potential for additional systemic shocks like Trump and Brexit.
My only complaint with this essay is that it's just an essay; several points could have used fleshing out. Further, Fraser relies on leftist shorthand, especially when critiquing the Clinton and Obama administrations, that elides the significant differences in economic policy between Democrats and Republicans in the United States. Her analysis is more nuanced in a Q&A with Jacobin founder Bhaskar Sunkara; I'd rather have ditched the interview and had twenty pages of more nuanced analysis.
But it's never a bad thing to wish you had more of a book. Fraser is a clear and incisive writer, avoiding the word soup and polemic style that afflicts so much of modern American leftism. There are much worse ways to spend an hour than reading an insightful essay into the crises of the modern West.
Fraser's contribution to this discussion is her analysis of what is exactly entailed what she calls "progressive neoliberalism." She describes two axes: distribution and recognition. Progressive neoliberalism, therefore, became hegemonic by uniting neoliberal distribution with egalitarian progressive recognition of women, people of color and sexual minorities. To do so, it defeated the previously existing New Deal coalition and reactionary neolibaeralism, which wedded the same neoliberal assumptions to racism, sexism and xenophobia.
Describing its rise and consolidation through the 1980s and '90s, followed by its decline and eventual collapse in the 2007-08 financial crisis, she identifies it not only as the rise of the finance economy, free trade and globalization – and the attendant rise of the precariat, low-wage service-sector jobs and attacks on unions – Fraser points out that its impending death is evidenced by the political upheavals taking place around the world; populists have assailed it from both right and left – and what will arise in its place is unclear. The old is dying, and the new cannot be born.
The question now, for those who value equality in both social and economic spheres, is whether a right-wing reactionary populism or a left-wing egalitarian populism will take its place. In 2016, she points out, Donald Trump won the presidency by promising a reactionary populism, and has since delivered reactionary neoliberalism, while the Democratic Party was split between the progressive populism of Bernie Sanders and the status quo progressive neoliberalism of Hillary Clinton.
She warns that attempts by the center-left or center-right to simply return to the status quo will merely prolong the awkward interregnum between the old and the new hegemonies – and the resulting uncertainty likely increases the potential for additional systemic shocks like Trump and Brexit.
My only complaint with this essay is that it's just an essay; several points could have used fleshing out. Further, Fraser relies on leftist shorthand, especially when critiquing the Clinton and Obama administrations, that elides the significant differences in economic policy between Democrats and Republicans in the United States. Her analysis is more nuanced in a Q&A with Jacobin founder Bhaskar Sunkara; I'd rather have ditched the interview and had twenty pages of more nuanced analysis.
But it's never a bad thing to wish you had more of a book. Fraser is a clear and incisive writer, avoiding the word soup and polemic style that afflicts so much of modern American leftism. There are much worse ways to spend an hour than reading an insightful essay into the crises of the modern West.
May 25, 2019
I really enjoyed this an antidote to the pluralist and identity politics camps, who are now rebranded as so many social movements, that are predominant today. Nancy Fraser said it well. It’s as if we’ve gone straight from the critique of the Leninist party to neo-anarchist spontaneism. I don’t think the latter is at all serious, if you really want to change the world in a fundamental way. So I’m very interested in exploring the huge middle ground between those extremes.
The real problem with identity politics has been the near total abrogation of the economic base, where Americans make their livings and is the only place to win over service sector, gig economy, and blue collar voters. Those identity politics camps have fundamentally ignored the realities of the economic base to focus on subjectivist elements and carving a role for themselves in the cultural superstructure. Unfortunately they have also done so at their own long-term political peril; and the chickens from the 1990s have come home to roost in the political realities manifested since 2016.
Particularly troublesome is the alliance and marriage of convenience between identity politics and neo-liberalism (including Third-Way Democrats). What is problematic is the dominant party in this relationship -- the neoliberal forces who have post-recession relaunched Wall Street speculation from the value created on Main Street and who have moved overseas production and formerly Main Street jobs -- who have co-opted that marriage for the sake of cultural cache and a culturally progressive message. Hilary Clinton's pandering to the various identity camps at the expense of an economic platform was the culmination of this. This just does not speak to the majority of Americans, foremost at the expense of answering how they are going to make their livings. Only an economic platform speaks to that.
And that's the rub. The economic base has been ignored by liberals and progressives since the end of the New Deal, ending with the programs of the Great Society. Fraser's short piece and interview frame this in a nice way that captures the challenges that come from the powers that be and ruling strata in American society - they are part of the difficulties and challenges to establishing a platform that returns with an emphasis on the economic base. A mature political strategy will have to do this by accounting for both the objective and the subjective aspects. Meaning, it is necessary to do this without selling the gains of the social movements down the river. What's needed, as anticipated in this work, is a political stance on the issue, doing so in a re-imagined working class bloc that includes the youth and large segments of the middle class and professional managerial class, and a plausible organizational policy for pursuing it. In borrowing Gramsci's turn of phrase, that is the new that cannot be born yet.
The real problem with identity politics has been the near total abrogation of the economic base, where Americans make their livings and is the only place to win over service sector, gig economy, and blue collar voters. Those identity politics camps have fundamentally ignored the realities of the economic base to focus on subjectivist elements and carving a role for themselves in the cultural superstructure. Unfortunately they have also done so at their own long-term political peril; and the chickens from the 1990s have come home to roost in the political realities manifested since 2016.
Particularly troublesome is the alliance and marriage of convenience between identity politics and neo-liberalism (including Third-Way Democrats). What is problematic is the dominant party in this relationship -- the neoliberal forces who have post-recession relaunched Wall Street speculation from the value created on Main Street and who have moved overseas production and formerly Main Street jobs -- who have co-opted that marriage for the sake of cultural cache and a culturally progressive message. Hilary Clinton's pandering to the various identity camps at the expense of an economic platform was the culmination of this. This just does not speak to the majority of Americans, foremost at the expense of answering how they are going to make their livings. Only an economic platform speaks to that.
And that's the rub. The economic base has been ignored by liberals and progressives since the end of the New Deal, ending with the programs of the Great Society. Fraser's short piece and interview frame this in a nice way that captures the challenges that come from the powers that be and ruling strata in American society - they are part of the difficulties and challenges to establishing a platform that returns with an emphasis on the economic base. A mature political strategy will have to do this by accounting for both the objective and the subjective aspects. Meaning, it is necessary to do this without selling the gains of the social movements down the river. What's needed, as anticipated in this work, is a political stance on the issue, doing so in a re-imagined working class bloc that includes the youth and large segments of the middle class and professional managerial class, and a plausible organizational policy for pursuing it. In borrowing Gramsci's turn of phrase, that is the new that cannot be born yet.
July 1, 2019
Highly recommended for the mandatory induction reading list for new boyfriends/ girlfriends!
I was hoping this was a new Nancy Fraser book but, turns out, this is ‘only’ a re-printed essay from 2017 plus a Nancy Fraser interview with Bhaskar Sunkera (Jacobin founder). I guess these ‘super star’ academics have to constantly recycle material into ‘new’ publications as part of their book deals. It’s like Zizek’s six-monthly books which even recycle his jokes. lol.
Anyway, Nancy Fraser is one of the most exciting contemporary political philosophers (who coined the term ‘progressive neoliberalism’) so there’s no harm in re-printing her essay (and part of a Gramsci quote) “The old is dying, and the new cannot be born”, in which he analyses the rise of the far right, Trump, Brexit and the essential decline of established parties, especially social democracy, as symptoms of a larger crisis of hegenony for neoliberalism.
Importantly, this is a crisis of neoliberal hegemony in both its versions the right-wing neoliberalism (conservatives) and its progressive kind (Obama, Clinton centrists/ social democracy).
Essentially, she says, politics has become an opposition between two versions of neoliberalism, distinguished on their axis of ‘recognition’, ie one could choose between multiculturalism and ethno-nationalism but one was stuck either way with financialization and de-industrialization. Like, Obama and Clinton would promote multiculturalism, LGBTQ rights, CEO feminism etc but still appointed their cabinet with the same Wall Street guys as would the conservative neoliberals. I heard this joke the other day that when a former Soviet leader was asked after the end of the Cold War what they should have done differently, he said that instead of the one-party state they should adopt the US ‘two party state’ where the powerful manage to rule for ever by agreeing on everything except abortion rights. So yeah, our choice has become one of two versions of financial capitalism, the ugly and the rainbow one (mind you, the rainbow one is militaristic and brutal too but that’s a story for another time). And this is then being sold as ‘the lesser evil’ lol.
Anyway, this has left a large part of the electorate without a political home, opening the door for right-wing, reactionary populism but also anti-neoliberal, if not anti-capitalist, progressive populism. And this is where Nancy Fraser fairly openly endorses Bernie Sanders <3 ☭
I was hoping this was a new Nancy Fraser book but, turns out, this is ‘only’ a re-printed essay from 2017 plus a Nancy Fraser interview with Bhaskar Sunkera (Jacobin founder). I guess these ‘super star’ academics have to constantly recycle material into ‘new’ publications as part of their book deals. It’s like Zizek’s six-monthly books which even recycle his jokes. lol.
Anyway, Nancy Fraser is one of the most exciting contemporary political philosophers (who coined the term ‘progressive neoliberalism’) so there’s no harm in re-printing her essay (and part of a Gramsci quote) “The old is dying, and the new cannot be born”, in which he analyses the rise of the far right, Trump, Brexit and the essential decline of established parties, especially social democracy, as symptoms of a larger crisis of hegenony for neoliberalism.
Importantly, this is a crisis of neoliberal hegemony in both its versions the right-wing neoliberalism (conservatives) and its progressive kind (Obama, Clinton centrists/ social democracy).
Essentially, she says, politics has become an opposition between two versions of neoliberalism, distinguished on their axis of ‘recognition’, ie one could choose between multiculturalism and ethno-nationalism but one was stuck either way with financialization and de-industrialization. Like, Obama and Clinton would promote multiculturalism, LGBTQ rights, CEO feminism etc but still appointed their cabinet with the same Wall Street guys as would the conservative neoliberals. I heard this joke the other day that when a former Soviet leader was asked after the end of the Cold War what they should have done differently, he said that instead of the one-party state they should adopt the US ‘two party state’ where the powerful manage to rule for ever by agreeing on everything except abortion rights. So yeah, our choice has become one of two versions of financial capitalism, the ugly and the rainbow one (mind you, the rainbow one is militaristic and brutal too but that’s a story for another time). And this is then being sold as ‘the lesser evil’ lol.
Anyway, this has left a large part of the electorate without a political home, opening the door for right-wing, reactionary populism but also anti-neoliberal, if not anti-capitalist, progressive populism. And this is where Nancy Fraser fairly openly endorses Bernie Sanders <3 ☭
May 11, 2019
This is a very short book that I believe is based on (or sounds like it's based on) a long lecture. It's a history of the demise of neoliberalism and the response in the age of Trump. She creates a roadmap for the insurgent left (i.e. the Bernie camp). I did not agree wholeheartedly with this, but it was a well-thought out critique, which I really appreciate.
June 26, 2020
fun introduction to gramsci's idea of hegemony and an interesting analysis of the 2016 american election.
January 6, 2022
Fraser poses a clear and accessible analysis of recent political tendencies, specifically examining the rise of progressive neoliberalism found within both Clinton and Blair. Her call for a progressive populism to take hold is one that is poignant and exciting, given the shift in politics since this book was published.
While this short read might not provide many actual solutions to the problems we face, Fraser lays bare the political framework that is necessary for any new left party to build themselves off of. Something I particularly like is her lack of interest in arguing for either a capitalist of post capitalist society, her vision is strictly focused on securing the future of workers in the present, with a much needed optimism that when the time comes we will deal with these larger organisational tasks.
While this short read might not provide many actual solutions to the problems we face, Fraser lays bare the political framework that is necessary for any new left party to build themselves off of. Something I particularly like is her lack of interest in arguing for either a capitalist of post capitalist society, her vision is strictly focused on securing the future of workers in the present, with a much needed optimism that when the time comes we will deal with these larger organisational tasks.
June 2, 2020
WHO HAS THE ANSWERS???
November 18, 2019
"The indispensable ideas for this purpose come from Antonio Gramsci. Hegemony is his term for the process by which a ruling class makes its domination appear natural by installing the presuppositions of its own worldview as the common sense of society as a whole. Its organizational counterpart is the hegemonic bloc: a coalition of disparate social forces that the ruling class assembles and through which it asserts its leadership. If they hope to challenge these arrangements, the dominated classes must construct a new, more persuasive common sense, or counterhegemony, and a new, more powerful political alliance, or counterhegemonic bloc."
Nancy Fraser is a Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at The New School of New York city. This little book consists of an essay and an interview by Bhaskar Sunkara, founder of the magazine Jacobin. Through the content, the author expresses a form of narrative in the macro level movements of political crises happening around globally, its causes and effects through hegemonic perspective which is gradually forming as a mainstream conscious framework from many academicians and field workers of Sociologists, Political Anthropologists and Scientists.
She gives a historical evolution of today's scenario from the cold war's Era New Deal movements of Tony Blair and Clinton to Progressive Neoliberalism, then to Reactionary Populism which pretty much works as hyper-reactionary neoliberalism via Trump and Brexit Movements and with hopeful prospectus into Progressive Populism using Sanders and Corbyn as few examples.
As a Person living in the age of modernity, one ought to update oneself with the knowledge and perspectives for critical thinking to act freely as much as possible. If one doesn't have original understanding, clearly the individual becomes a part of someone else's understanding and worldview. In such a way, this work is highly recommended irrespective of one's political standpoint.
"The old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” ~ Antonio Gramsci
Nancy Fraser is a Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at The New School of New York city. This little book consists of an essay and an interview by Bhaskar Sunkara, founder of the magazine Jacobin. Through the content, the author expresses a form of narrative in the macro level movements of political crises happening around globally, its causes and effects through hegemonic perspective which is gradually forming as a mainstream conscious framework from many academicians and field workers of Sociologists, Political Anthropologists and Scientists.
She gives a historical evolution of today's scenario from the cold war's Era New Deal movements of Tony Blair and Clinton to Progressive Neoliberalism, then to Reactionary Populism which pretty much works as hyper-reactionary neoliberalism via Trump and Brexit Movements and with hopeful prospectus into Progressive Populism using Sanders and Corbyn as few examples.
As a Person living in the age of modernity, one ought to update oneself with the knowledge and perspectives for critical thinking to act freely as much as possible. If one doesn't have original understanding, clearly the individual becomes a part of someone else's understanding and worldview. In such a way, this work is highly recommended irrespective of one's political standpoint.
"The old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” ~ Antonio Gramsci
October 9, 2022
“The sort of change we require can only come from elsewhere, from a project that is at the very least antineoliberal, if not anticapitalist.”
Quase que invariavelmente, a crítica da esquerda aos problemas humanos é uma crítica ao capitalismo. Como se a mudança de um sistema econômico por outro fosse a resposta. Apesar de provas contrárias registradas na história.
Me parece que o recorte do neoliberalismo como a causa do problema não é o melhor. Eu sinto que o regime econômico é algo comparável a uma doença, numa metáfora bastante cínica. A melhor opção é “escolher” a que faz menos mal. Considerando, é claro, que escolher é uma opção.
Vivesse Fraser num regime comunista, imagino que ela estaria lutando da mesma forma contra o sistema. Por mais liberdade, mais oportunidades, etc. Daí penso que o problema não é o sistema em si, mas a impossibilidade de qualquer sistema entregar ordem, qualidade de vida e satisfação de forma ideal.
Quando ela analisa o governo Trump, diz:
“What his supporters voted for, in short, is not what they got”. Mas com Obama foi igual, como ela mesmo destaca. A depender da posição política do governante, as an��lises são mais ou menos elogiosas. Mas identifico um indício de que o desejo por melhoria independe do governo ou posição política. A intensidade e emoção é que fazem diferença na análise.
Isso não quer dizer que melhorias não devam ser feitas. A luta deve ser por isso mesmo. Acho que as propostas radicais acabam me incomodando mais. Inclusive, por serem genéricas e imprecisas. Entretanto, tento não culpar o analista social. Não é fácil mudar o mundo.
De qualquer forma, achei o título do livro ótimo.
Quase que invariavelmente, a crítica da esquerda aos problemas humanos é uma crítica ao capitalismo. Como se a mudança de um sistema econômico por outro fosse a resposta. Apesar de provas contrárias registradas na história.
Me parece que o recorte do neoliberalismo como a causa do problema não é o melhor. Eu sinto que o regime econômico é algo comparável a uma doença, numa metáfora bastante cínica. A melhor opção é “escolher” a que faz menos mal. Considerando, é claro, que escolher é uma opção.
Vivesse Fraser num regime comunista, imagino que ela estaria lutando da mesma forma contra o sistema. Por mais liberdade, mais oportunidades, etc. Daí penso que o problema não é o sistema em si, mas a impossibilidade de qualquer sistema entregar ordem, qualidade de vida e satisfação de forma ideal.
Quando ela analisa o governo Trump, diz:
“What his supporters voted for, in short, is not what they got”. Mas com Obama foi igual, como ela mesmo destaca. A depender da posição política do governante, as an��lises são mais ou menos elogiosas. Mas identifico um indício de que o desejo por melhoria independe do governo ou posição política. A intensidade e emoção é que fazem diferença na análise.
Isso não quer dizer que melhorias não devam ser feitas. A luta deve ser por isso mesmo. Acho que as propostas radicais acabam me incomodando mais. Inclusive, por serem genéricas e imprecisas. Entretanto, tento não culpar o analista social. Não é fácil mudar o mundo.
De qualquer forma, achei o título do livro ótimo.
April 27, 2020
“Financialised capitalism is an inherently crisis-prone social formation. The crisis complex we encounter today is the increasingly acute expression of its in-built tendency to destabilise itself.”
This is a great short read on the situation we find ourselves in, and how neoliberalism’s success in stripping capitalism of the social, economic and moral constraints needed to make it workable has only hastened its own demise. It’s only become more accurate since the pandemic. Worth a read.
This is a great short read on the situation we find ourselves in, and how neoliberalism’s success in stripping capitalism of the social, economic and moral constraints needed to make it workable has only hastened its own demise. It’s only become more accurate since the pandemic. Worth a read.
January 11, 2023
Nothing super new but def made me want to snuggle up to some Gramsci and other theory and do something! Enjoyed the interview at the end.
August 5, 2019
A short and readable assesment of the current crisis off neoliberalism and the possible path forward. I like how it used Gramsci.
August 25, 2021
A short brief of American politics (primarily the dominant neoliberal class) through a lens of hegemonic theory. Fraser describes the internal conflicts of both the Republican and democratic blocs and paves a way forward, putting the needs of the working class (in its perverse diversity) forward. There are gaps and questions left unanswered but it appears these questions are expanded in her larger works.
August 20, 2020
The center cannot hold.
The center is the distributive hegemony of unfettered globalized capitalism that benefits the plutocrats and hollows the middle-class. It matters not whichever party, Democrat or Republican, is in power, both follow this distributive model.
The only modifier of this neoliberal center is progressive or reactionary, ie whether the recognition is inclusive (respecting people of all colors, national origins, genders, and sexual orientations) or exclusionary (respecting whites, natives, mostly males, and heterosexuals).
Once one understands the dual approach (distribution and recognition) to the political system then the solution to the left - right divide is obvious. The ninety-nine percenters must unite because no matter who you are, whether you support Sanders or Trump, you all are poor, you all face structural obstacles to better your and your children's economic well-being. Your enemy is not each other. Your enemy is the capitalistic system that deliberately deprives you of economic tools and advancement, exploits your labor, and hoards opportunities (educational and managerial) for its elite. You have been woke to the false promise of capitalism. Now wake to the peril of social and cultural divide-and-conquer. Unite and rule.
How? This book does not say.
The center is the distributive hegemony of unfettered globalized capitalism that benefits the plutocrats and hollows the middle-class. It matters not whichever party, Democrat or Republican, is in power, both follow this distributive model.
The only modifier of this neoliberal center is progressive or reactionary, ie whether the recognition is inclusive (respecting people of all colors, national origins, genders, and sexual orientations) or exclusionary (respecting whites, natives, mostly males, and heterosexuals).
Once one understands the dual approach (distribution and recognition) to the political system then the solution to the left - right divide is obvious. The ninety-nine percenters must unite because no matter who you are, whether you support Sanders or Trump, you all are poor, you all face structural obstacles to better your and your children's economic well-being. Your enemy is not each other. Your enemy is the capitalistic system that deliberately deprives you of economic tools and advancement, exploits your labor, and hoards opportunities (educational and managerial) for its elite. You have been woke to the false promise of capitalism. Now wake to the peril of social and cultural divide-and-conquer. Unite and rule.
How? This book does not say.
July 30, 2020
Nancy Fraser writes with the confidence of someone who harbors no doubt, brooks no compromise, speaking on behalf of some singular and objective assessment of the World Historical Moment. Sometimes that can be annoying, but in the case of this pamphlet it seems to be a hardened way of sorting and naming some inchoate, complex phenomena in a way that renders them choate and distinct: progressive neoliberalism (Clinton) vs reactionary neoliberalism (GOP). Trump mouthed anti-neoliberal sentiments, but turns out to be “hyper-reactionary neoliberal”—bad on economics AND on questions of social equality. Not complex, but neat. This confidence breaks a bit in the attached interview, as she seems uncertain about the details that might conjure the alternative (anti-neoliberalism?) via a coalition between reactionary the white working class, immigrants and people of color. No models have legs. Though her account is too pat and predictably Marxist, this pamphlet would make a good discussion piece.
May 12, 2024
Tiny but powerful - possibly one of the best diagnoses of the current neoliberal crisis. And possibly the best we can hope for right now is collectively seeing what cannot be unseen?
'We have to distinguish between neoliberal policy, which remains in place pretty much everywhere, and neoliberal hegemony, which is quite shaken. We have a situation ... which combines two things in a tense amalgam: first, a dramatic weakening of neoliberalism's authority - diminished confidence in its ideas, policies, and the institutional order that underlies them; and secy, the inability at least so far to generate a plausible alternative, either at the political or the institutional level.'
'We have to distinguish between neoliberal policy, which remains in place pretty much everywhere, and neoliberal hegemony, which is quite shaken. We have a situation ... which combines two things in a tense amalgam: first, a dramatic weakening of neoliberalism's authority - diminished confidence in its ideas, policies, and the institutional order that underlies them; and secy, the inability at least so far to generate a plausible alternative, either at the political or the institutional level.'
June 23, 2024
Clear analysis of where the US finds itself under C21 neoliberal capitalism and what needs to change but I think the author misses the underpinning of Dominionism and Christofascism. She is correct that there needs to be a new way but she is still colouring in between the lines of the capitalism-socialism binary. Having said that, you can't say too much in 40 pages!
March 23, 2020
Super clear and informative account of the co-optation of progressive politics by the neoliberal corporate-managerial classes. Doesn't do much in the way of proposing an alternative, but still a really engaging, helpful read. Free ebook from Verso! :)
January 10, 2021
Points out all the stuff about the crisis of neoliberalism etc and calls for developing the sort of 'progressive populism' shown by the likes of Sanders and Corbyn, but structuring it with a reorganised, redefined working-class.
August 3, 2019
Very good attempt to understand and overcome the Política struggles of the first two decades of the XXIth century
Read
August 25, 2020Around a 7
January 15, 2023
Nothing groundbreaking, then again this was published in 2019 so maybe I would have felt differently if I read this 4 years ago
July 28, 2023
We face a global political crisis today where the masses have stopped believing in what was once considered to be the ‘common sense’ reality that has underpinned the political system. With a loss of confidence in the global neoliberal order and the elites of that order, people are searching for new ideologies, organizations, and leadership. This can be exemplified by:
- the election of Trump/the MAGA movement in America
- Brexit in the UK
- the growth in popularity of various far right anti-immigration groups throughout Europe
- an upsurge in proto-fascist strongmen in Latin America (Ex: Bolsonaro), Asia, and the Pacific (Ex: Duterte)
The major causes of this crisis can accurately be broadly identified with the ills of neoliberalism, such as:
- the domination of financial capital and the anarchy that comes with it (ex: 2008 financial crisis)
- increasing precariousness in the labor market, with less regulations, benefits, and wages
- skyrocketing debt
- mass incarceration
- increased alienation/less community action/decreased social support
The crackup of faith in neoliberalism due to its ails has led to a hegemonic crisis. The Gramscian notion of hegemony essentially extrapolates Marx’s idea from the German Ideology that “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.”. To Gramsci, hegemony refers to the process by which the ruling class makes their domination feel natural, and therefore the common sense of all society. This is organized through a hegemonic bloc, who are the various social forces that the ruling class assembles to assert/support its leadership. We are in the midst of a new, more persuasive “common sense” (counter-hegemony) trying to break through the hegemonic bloc with its own counter-hegemonic bloc.
The old hegemonic bloc was progressive neoliberalism. It was made up of mainstream liberal social movements/currents (feminism, antiracism, multiculturalism, environmentalism, and LGBTQ+ rights) combined with U.S. finance capital/FIRE sectors (Wall Street, Silicon Valley) and ‘symbolic’ cultural sectors like Hollywood and Disney. This bloc sought to give recognition to these social groups while distributing wealth according to neoliberal policies which are heavily in favor of the big bourgeoisie. At the core of progressive neoliberalism was an ethos of superficial emancipation and a purported meritocracy. It wanted to strengthen “diversity” and pushed for “empowerment” of historically marginalized groups. There was no push to abolish class or social hierarchy, simply diversify it. “Empowering” through neoliberal meritocracy really means that “deserving” minorities that have hitherto been “underrepresented” should get a seat at the table. Determining who deserves what is their class, and therefore the progressive neoliberal goal simply boils down to saying that “under-represented groups” should be able to obtain positions/pay on a par with the straight white men of their own class.
This form of neoliberalism sold itself to socially active groups by exuding an aurora of progression, cosmopolitanism, and liberation. Its main competitor had hitherto been reactionary neoliberalism which mainly attached itself to the Republican Party. Each bloc shared essentially the same politics/economics of wealth redistribution (i.e Neoliberal free market fundamentalism), but the reactionary strand obviously had a much more reactionary vision to who it wanted to ‘recognize’. It appealed to a base that was ethnonationalistic, anti-immigrant, pro-Christian, racist, patriarchal, and homophobic. The 2 ruling class blocs, the reactionary and progressive neolibs, have led us to our situation today of a rentier police state. They directly supported every economic decision that has led to the modern day crisis in confidence throughout the western world in neoliberalism. Now, something will likely take their places to resolidify class power for the rich.
The first chance to create a new common sense came with Obama in 2008 and his promises of “hope” and “change”, but instead Obama sold out his base and gave massive tax breaks to Wall Street billionaires and bailed them out during the financial crises while 10 million people were evicted. This directly led to 2011’s Occupy Wallstreet movement, which was a second chance to forge a new common sense. It even attracted broad support (up to 60% of Americans according to this book). Yet in 2012, by lacking any real organizational infrastructure and being ideologically backwards, Occupy’s energy was siphoned off into re-electing Obama who co-opted many of their terms and rhetoric. These signs so far have just been rumblings of unseen tectonic plates shifting. The 2015-16 election was another such tremor.
When the 2016 primaries began, Trump, on the Republican ticket, campaigned on populist themes and crushed the other 16 primary candidates. On the Democratic side, self-proclaimed Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders forced party stalwart Hillary Clinton to use every dirty trick and pull every lever of power in order to defeat him. Trump and Sanders both lambasted neoliberalism. Bernie’s solution was wealth redistribution from the “upper 1%” to the bottom “99%”. Trump spoke much more overtly nationalistic and spoke of isolationism internationally. On top of this he was much farther than your average ‘dog whistling’ conservative; he was and is quite openly racist (especially towards Muslims), sexist, homophobic, ableist, and whatever other shit that can be piled on. Trump’s campaign rhetoric suggested a new proto-hegemonic bloc, which we can call reactionary populism. It seemed to combine reactionary politics of recognition with populist politics of distribution. The bloc Sanders envisioned, by contrast, could be called progressive populism. He sought to combine an inclusive politics of recognition with working class politics of distribution. This would include: criminal-justice reform plus Medicare for all, reproductive justice plus free college tuition, LGBTQ+ rights, and breaking up the big banks. Neither bloc came to fruition. Sanders was defeated by Clinton and Trump simply did not fulfill his campaign promises (shocker). Trump did nothing to rein in Wall Street; he never took a serious step to implement large-scale, job-creating public infrastructure projects; his efforts to encourage manufacturing were confined to symbolic displays; and his tax code fucked the lower classes and petty-bourgeoisie in favor of syphoning wealth to the upper 1%. His appointment of a Goldman Sachs crony to the Treasury erased any doubts that neoliberal economic policy would be hampered under his administration. Trump compensated for this by escalating his reactionary politics of recognition. The laundry list of his cruelty for the sake of cruelty as a way to bind him and his supporters together is vast. So, the old progressive neoliberalism is dying while the new reactionary or progressive populism cannot be born.
It’s at this point where the author goes off the rails. She states that some form of populism is the most likely candidate to become a hegemonic bloc (so far so good) because the majority of voters seemed to reject neoliberalism in the 2016 election (bzzzt wrong). I’ll break down why I disagree:
1. Trump still lost the popular vote. Even by looking at pure voting numbers Trump’s populism was less popular than Hillary’s milquetoast neoliberalism
2. Taking any electoral data and extrapolating that onto every American doesn’t work when most of this country hasn’t voted since Nixon was president. People have been completely checked out of the formal political process for decades
3. Biden, the most boring neoliberal since Hillary, won the 2020 election by running a campaign that was based on “a return to normalcy”
The author thinks a progressive populist bloc has the best chance of bridging the divide between most Americans and forming a new common sense. To do so, it needs to convince marginalized peoples (immigrants, LGBTQ people, minorities, etc) that it can improve their material well-being as well as convince white working class people that reactionary populism will not fundamentally improve their material conditions. She then says this: “what commends progressive populism is not only its potential subjective viability. In contrast to its likely rivals, it has the further advantage of being capable, at least in principle, of addressing the real, objective side of our crisis.”
Quintessential bourgeois reformism packaged as something anti-capitalist. Remember, hegemony comes from the ruling class itself solidifying its rule in the minds of the working class, and it does so by creating and propagating a common sense that supports the ruling class and is propagated by the bourgeoises’ cronies. Why would this ruling class ever support a common sense directly against their best interests? Why would finance capital support regulations on itself? Why would the oil industry support any real measures to fight climate change? This is genuinely anti revolutionary dogshit.
“Progressive populism could end up being transitional—a way station en route to some new postcapitalist form of society.” Give me a break dude. Overall this is a short, worthwhile read but must be read critically.
- the election of Trump/the MAGA movement in America
- Brexit in the UK
- the growth in popularity of various far right anti-immigration groups throughout Europe
- an upsurge in proto-fascist strongmen in Latin America (Ex: Bolsonaro), Asia, and the Pacific (Ex: Duterte)
The major causes of this crisis can accurately be broadly identified with the ills of neoliberalism, such as:
- the domination of financial capital and the anarchy that comes with it (ex: 2008 financial crisis)
- increasing precariousness in the labor market, with less regulations, benefits, and wages
- skyrocketing debt
- mass incarceration
- increased alienation/less community action/decreased social support
The crackup of faith in neoliberalism due to its ails has led to a hegemonic crisis. The Gramscian notion of hegemony essentially extrapolates Marx’s idea from the German Ideology that “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.”. To Gramsci, hegemony refers to the process by which the ruling class makes their domination feel natural, and therefore the common sense of all society. This is organized through a hegemonic bloc, who are the various social forces that the ruling class assembles to assert/support its leadership. We are in the midst of a new, more persuasive “common sense” (counter-hegemony) trying to break through the hegemonic bloc with its own counter-hegemonic bloc.
The old hegemonic bloc was progressive neoliberalism. It was made up of mainstream liberal social movements/currents (feminism, antiracism, multiculturalism, environmentalism, and LGBTQ+ rights) combined with U.S. finance capital/FIRE sectors (Wall Street, Silicon Valley) and ‘symbolic’ cultural sectors like Hollywood and Disney. This bloc sought to give recognition to these social groups while distributing wealth according to neoliberal policies which are heavily in favor of the big bourgeoisie. At the core of progressive neoliberalism was an ethos of superficial emancipation and a purported meritocracy. It wanted to strengthen “diversity” and pushed for “empowerment” of historically marginalized groups. There was no push to abolish class or social hierarchy, simply diversify it. “Empowering” through neoliberal meritocracy really means that “deserving” minorities that have hitherto been “underrepresented” should get a seat at the table. Determining who deserves what is their class, and therefore the progressive neoliberal goal simply boils down to saying that “under-represented groups” should be able to obtain positions/pay on a par with the straight white men of their own class.
This form of neoliberalism sold itself to socially active groups by exuding an aurora of progression, cosmopolitanism, and liberation. Its main competitor had hitherto been reactionary neoliberalism which mainly attached itself to the Republican Party. Each bloc shared essentially the same politics/economics of wealth redistribution (i.e Neoliberal free market fundamentalism), but the reactionary strand obviously had a much more reactionary vision to who it wanted to ‘recognize’. It appealed to a base that was ethnonationalistic, anti-immigrant, pro-Christian, racist, patriarchal, and homophobic. The 2 ruling class blocs, the reactionary and progressive neolibs, have led us to our situation today of a rentier police state. They directly supported every economic decision that has led to the modern day crisis in confidence throughout the western world in neoliberalism. Now, something will likely take their places to resolidify class power for the rich.
The first chance to create a new common sense came with Obama in 2008 and his promises of “hope” and “change”, but instead Obama sold out his base and gave massive tax breaks to Wall Street billionaires and bailed them out during the financial crises while 10 million people were evicted. This directly led to 2011’s Occupy Wallstreet movement, which was a second chance to forge a new common sense. It even attracted broad support (up to 60% of Americans according to this book). Yet in 2012, by lacking any real organizational infrastructure and being ideologically backwards, Occupy’s energy was siphoned off into re-electing Obama who co-opted many of their terms and rhetoric. These signs so far have just been rumblings of unseen tectonic plates shifting. The 2015-16 election was another such tremor.
When the 2016 primaries began, Trump, on the Republican ticket, campaigned on populist themes and crushed the other 16 primary candidates. On the Democratic side, self-proclaimed Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders forced party stalwart Hillary Clinton to use every dirty trick and pull every lever of power in order to defeat him. Trump and Sanders both lambasted neoliberalism. Bernie’s solution was wealth redistribution from the “upper 1%” to the bottom “99%”. Trump spoke much more overtly nationalistic and spoke of isolationism internationally. On top of this he was much farther than your average ‘dog whistling’ conservative; he was and is quite openly racist (especially towards Muslims), sexist, homophobic, ableist, and whatever other shit that can be piled on. Trump’s campaign rhetoric suggested a new proto-hegemonic bloc, which we can call reactionary populism. It seemed to combine reactionary politics of recognition with populist politics of distribution. The bloc Sanders envisioned, by contrast, could be called progressive populism. He sought to combine an inclusive politics of recognition with working class politics of distribution. This would include: criminal-justice reform plus Medicare for all, reproductive justice plus free college tuition, LGBTQ+ rights, and breaking up the big banks. Neither bloc came to fruition. Sanders was defeated by Clinton and Trump simply did not fulfill his campaign promises (shocker). Trump did nothing to rein in Wall Street; he never took a serious step to implement large-scale, job-creating public infrastructure projects; his efforts to encourage manufacturing were confined to symbolic displays; and his tax code fucked the lower classes and petty-bourgeoisie in favor of syphoning wealth to the upper 1%. His appointment of a Goldman Sachs crony to the Treasury erased any doubts that neoliberal economic policy would be hampered under his administration. Trump compensated for this by escalating his reactionary politics of recognition. The laundry list of his cruelty for the sake of cruelty as a way to bind him and his supporters together is vast. So, the old progressive neoliberalism is dying while the new reactionary or progressive populism cannot be born.
It’s at this point where the author goes off the rails. She states that some form of populism is the most likely candidate to become a hegemonic bloc (so far so good) because the majority of voters seemed to reject neoliberalism in the 2016 election (bzzzt wrong). I’ll break down why I disagree:
1. Trump still lost the popular vote. Even by looking at pure voting numbers Trump’s populism was less popular than Hillary’s milquetoast neoliberalism
2. Taking any electoral data and extrapolating that onto every American doesn’t work when most of this country hasn’t voted since Nixon was president. People have been completely checked out of the formal political process for decades
3. Biden, the most boring neoliberal since Hillary, won the 2020 election by running a campaign that was based on “a return to normalcy”
The author thinks a progressive populist bloc has the best chance of bridging the divide between most Americans and forming a new common sense. To do so, it needs to convince marginalized peoples (immigrants, LGBTQ people, minorities, etc) that it can improve their material well-being as well as convince white working class people that reactionary populism will not fundamentally improve their material conditions. She then says this: “what commends progressive populism is not only its potential subjective viability. In contrast to its likely rivals, it has the further advantage of being capable, at least in principle, of addressing the real, objective side of our crisis.”
Quintessential bourgeois reformism packaged as something anti-capitalist. Remember, hegemony comes from the ruling class itself solidifying its rule in the minds of the working class, and it does so by creating and propagating a common sense that supports the ruling class and is propagated by the bourgeoises’ cronies. Why would this ruling class ever support a common sense directly against their best interests? Why would finance capital support regulations on itself? Why would the oil industry support any real measures to fight climate change? This is genuinely anti revolutionary dogshit.
“Progressive populism could end up being transitional—a way station en route to some new postcapitalist form of society.” Give me a break dude. Overall this is a short, worthwhile read but must be read critically.
December 5, 2021
Ano, také se mně líbí ten jeden citát Gramsciho, všem se nám líbí. Neslibuje ale víc, než co skutečně žijeme?
Fraser tady ve velké stručnosti nabízí zlatý standard současné levicové analýzy. A je to ok, hádám.
Trump přišel, protože hegemonie prošla fatální diskreditací. Umírající hegemonii představuje slovy Fraser "progresivní neoliberalismus". Přivedli ho na svět technokratičtí (levicoví) liberálové Bill Clinton a Tony Blair, kteří svou Třetí cestou ustanovili nový historický blok. Ten v myšlení levice nahradil sociální demokracii definovanou důrazem na sociální stát tvořící výsledek střetu s kapitálem. Teď se máme s kapitálem hlavně domluvit, poladit to tak, ať se máme všichni dobře. Vyhovuje to pochopitelně hlavně kapitálu.
To ale dlouho nebylo vidět. Progresivní neoliberalismus totiž nemá pouze ekonomickou nohu. Jde o alianci.
Na jedné straně stojí liberalismus dlouhých 90. let, jehož součástí byla politika uznání (politics of recognition) zasazující se o témata feminismu, LGBTQ práv, antirasismu, multikulturalismu, enviromentalismu. Na druhé neoliberální ekonomické doktríny. Těm étos liberální emancipace dodával legitimitu a společně tvoří "nový duch kapitalismu".
Vrchol přišel s prvním Afroameričanem v Oválné pracovně. Barack Obama představuje symbolické vítězství politiky uznání, současně ale i záchranu neoliberálního systému prohlubujících nerovnosti. Příkladnou byla reakce na ekonomickou krizi, která spočívala v privatizaci zisků a socializaci nákladů.
Bum a jsme v krizi, která plodí různé morbidity!
Přichází Trump a odmítá uznání i redistribuci. Místo multikulturalismu nabízí etnonacionalismus, místo neoliberalismu ekonomický protekcionismus. Fraser mluví o "reakčním populismu", v případě Trumpa dokonce "hyperreakčním".
Na scénu ale vchází i "progresivní populismus", a to díky kampani demokratického socialisty Bernieho Sanderse, který spojuje inkluzivitu spolu s egalitářským přístupem k ekonomice.
Tadá. Všichni musíme být Bernie Bros.
Mně ale pálí otázka: skutečně to staré zemřelo? Vůbec si tím nejsem jistý, a to i během pandemie, která vrací stát do hry, po čemž Fraser samozřejmě volá. I centristé dnes sahají po levicových politikách, což v něčem přitakává směru vytyčenému "progresivními populisty". Současně ale, jak popisuje třeba Adam Tooze, cílem nových ekonomických politik stále zůstává _stabilizace_ systému, ne jeho proměna.
Osobně bych tedy rozhodně nepodceňoval a nepohřbíval "progresivní neoliberalismus" a jeho schopnost přežít, ba dokonce narodit se v novém. Jak ostatně zpívají konzervy: Who run the world? (girlbosses [& Woke Capital]).
Fraser tady ve velké stručnosti nabízí zlatý standard současné levicové analýzy. A je to ok, hádám.
Trump přišel, protože hegemonie prošla fatální diskreditací. Umírající hegemonii představuje slovy Fraser "progresivní neoliberalismus". Přivedli ho na svět technokratičtí (levicoví) liberálové Bill Clinton a Tony Blair, kteří svou Třetí cestou ustanovili nový historický blok. Ten v myšlení levice nahradil sociální demokracii definovanou důrazem na sociální stát tvořící výsledek střetu s kapitálem. Teď se máme s kapitálem hlavně domluvit, poladit to tak, ať se máme všichni dobře. Vyhovuje to pochopitelně hlavně kapitálu.
To ale dlouho nebylo vidět. Progresivní neoliberalismus totiž nemá pouze ekonomickou nohu. Jde o alianci.
Na jedné straně stojí liberalismus dlouhých 90. let, jehož součástí byla politika uznání (politics of recognition) zasazující se o témata feminismu, LGBTQ práv, antirasismu, multikulturalismu, enviromentalismu. Na druhé neoliberální ekonomické doktríny. Těm étos liberální emancipace dodával legitimitu a společně tvoří "nový duch kapitalismu".
Vrchol přišel s prvním Afroameričanem v Oválné pracovně. Barack Obama představuje symbolické vítězství politiky uznání, současně ale i záchranu neoliberálního systému prohlubujících nerovnosti. Příkladnou byla reakce na ekonomickou krizi, která spočívala v privatizaci zisků a socializaci nákladů.
Bum a jsme v krizi, která plodí různé morbidity!
Přichází Trump a odmítá uznání i redistribuci. Místo multikulturalismu nabízí etnonacionalismus, místo neoliberalismu ekonomický protekcionismus. Fraser mluví o "reakčním populismu", v případě Trumpa dokonce "hyperreakčním".
Na scénu ale vchází i "progresivní populismus", a to díky kampani demokratického socialisty Bernieho Sanderse, který spojuje inkluzivitu spolu s egalitářským přístupem k ekonomice.
Tadá. Všichni musíme být Bernie Bros.
Mně ale pálí otázka: skutečně to staré zemřelo? Vůbec si tím nejsem jistý, a to i během pandemie, která vrací stát do hry, po čemž Fraser samozřejmě volá. I centristé dnes sahají po levicových politikách, což v něčem přitakává směru vytyčenému "progresivními populisty". Současně ale, jak popisuje třeba Adam Tooze, cílem nových ekonomických politik stále zůstává _stabilizace_ systému, ne jeho proměna.
Osobně bych tedy rozhodně nepodceňoval a nepohřbíval "progresivní neoliberalismus" a jeho schopnost přežít, ba dokonce narodit se v novém. Jak ostatně zpívají konzervy: Who run the world? (girlbosses [& Woke Capital]).
January 3, 2020
Literally just a reprint of Fraser’s American Affairs article and a Jacobin interview.
Fraser offers a compelling analysis but I’m skeptical of her optimism for the rise of “progressive populist” politics in the wake of the recent UK election. If Sanders wins the Democratic nomination there might be an opening for such a politics in the US at least, but again I’m skeptical whether it can break through widespread ingrained cultural/social conservatism on the one hand and resistance from the political and economic establishment on the other.
This is worth a read if you’re not familiar with Fraser’s recent work and want a quick overview. It’s also good as a fairly compelling analysis of our current political moment, although soon to be outdated. I do wonder for whom Fraser is writing, because I can’t imagine her analysis being nearly as combing to someone who does not already share her basic political outlook.
Fraser offers a compelling analysis but I’m skeptical of her optimism for the rise of “progressive populist” politics in the wake of the recent UK election. If Sanders wins the Democratic nomination there might be an opening for such a politics in the US at least, but again I’m skeptical whether it can break through widespread ingrained cultural/social conservatism on the one hand and resistance from the political and economic establishment on the other.
This is worth a read if you’re not familiar with Fraser’s recent work and want a quick overview. It’s also good as a fairly compelling analysis of our current political moment, although soon to be outdated. I do wonder for whom Fraser is writing, because I can’t imagine her analysis being nearly as combing to someone who does not already share her basic political outlook.
October 21, 2020
As Nancy Fraser sees it in her short but thought-provoking book, The Old Is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born, our current political quagmire is, quite simply, a hegemonic quagmire: "The political strand of our general crisis is a crisis of hegemony" (9). Hegemony is a term that defines power, dominance, and control in a particular social order. Hegemonic rule is quite simply how dominance expresses itself: what is right and what is wrong, what is acceptable and what is unacceptable, what is good and what is bad. Therefore, to correct our political problems, we must look first, not at a person or policy, but at a hegemony. As I read it, what this means is that debates about people (i.e., candidates) and policies (e.g., health care) are too micro. Instead, we must interrogate the macrosystem (i.e., the hegemony) that creates the creative conditions for particular microsystems.
Fraser argues that we are experiencing a transitional moment. This is a moment when the old hegemonic order (neoliberalism at large) sees a challenger emerging. This challenger or counter-hegemonic bloc is populism. Both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaigns argued for a rejection of neoliberalism and an embrace of populism. Fraser is clear, however, that both campaigns engaged with populism differently; Sanders' populism was "progressive" while Trump's populism was "reactionary." Regrettably, neither populist thrust carried the day. Sanders lost to Hilary Clinton, a signifier of neo-liberalism if there ever was one, and Trump, once elected, retreated from the reactionary populism that defined his campaign. Fraser writes, "Not only has his economic populism vanished, his scapegoating has grown ever more vicious. What his supports voted for, in short, is not what they got. The upshot is not reactionary populism, but hyper reactionary neoliberalism" (26). Nevertheless, neither Clinton, a neoliberal figure, nor Trump, in theory a populist figure but in practice a neoliberal one, could answer the call for a hegemonic order. Lamenting Clinton's loss or championing Biden's victory does little but "reinstate progressive neoliberalism," which, as Fraser sees it, would "recreate...the very conditions that created Trump" (28).
Fraser rejects neoliberalism and celebrates the populism of 2016, even as she demarcates the Sanders populism from the Trump populism. For Fraser, "The burning question is whether that mass can now be melded together in a new counterhegemonic bloc. For that to happen, working-class supporters of Trump and of Sanders would have to come to understand themselves as allies--differently situated victims of a single 'rigged economy,' which they could jointly seek to transform" (29-30). This is close to Todd McGowan's notion of emancipation that he develops in two wonderful books: Emancipation After Hegel and Universality and Identity. In short, McGowan argues for an expression of emancipation grounded on a shared recognition of lack. That is to say, what we share, in fact, the only characteristic we share is the constitutive lack that defines subjectivity.
Fraser, though, is not a psychoanalytic thinker, nor is she necessarily a Hegelian thinker. For Fraser, this new populist hegemony must consist of a collection of particular identities. She writes, "Renouncing the progressive-neoliberal stress on personal attitudes, it [the progressive-populist bloc] must focus its efforts on the structural-institutional bases of contemporary society. Especially important, it must highlight the shared roots of class and status injustices in financialized capitalism...it must link the harms suffered by women, immigrants, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people to those experienced by the working-class strata now drawn to right-wing populism" (35). This is close but insufficient. I want to be clear: Fraser's idea is far better than the reactionary, conservative politics of Donald Trump, and it is also better than neoliberalism, but it defines inclusivity as a collection of distinct particulars instead of seeing beyond those particulars. This is important because even if a political project wants and attempts to be as inclusive as possible, it cannot include everyone. New categories of people, new subjective experiences, cohorts, and sub-cohorts emerge every day. This model of inclusivity will always ensure that someone is outside of this progressive-populist bloc. It is far better to gravitate toward what we all lack, that constitutive lack that defines subjectivity.
I have recently thought about how we should conceptualize and subsequently frame what I hope follows neoliberal hegemony. After reading Fraser, I ask the following questions: When are we egalitarian enough? Why focus on positive recognition? Is positivity (what we can have) more palatable than what we cannot have (what we lack)? None of these questions are to suggest that we should stop at any point, that any expression (as limited as so many are) of egalitarianism is enough, and I think this is the problem I have with Fraser's argument. It hinges on the notion that we must build coalitions from disparate groups instead of recognizing the single quality or characteristic we all share. Again, I think Fraser gets close. She understands how so many people of different races, creeds, sexual orientations, so on and so forth suffer from the tyranny of neoliberalism. But her solution hinges on seeing these groups of people as inherently different, which, of course, on many levels they are. What I want is a recognition of what we share to go deeper than neoliberalism. This gets me close to essentializing the human condition, I know, but I am prepared to argue that the problem is much deeper than neoliberalism.
Fraser argues that we are experiencing a transitional moment. This is a moment when the old hegemonic order (neoliberalism at large) sees a challenger emerging. This challenger or counter-hegemonic bloc is populism. Both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaigns argued for a rejection of neoliberalism and an embrace of populism. Fraser is clear, however, that both campaigns engaged with populism differently; Sanders' populism was "progressive" while Trump's populism was "reactionary." Regrettably, neither populist thrust carried the day. Sanders lost to Hilary Clinton, a signifier of neo-liberalism if there ever was one, and Trump, once elected, retreated from the reactionary populism that defined his campaign. Fraser writes, "Not only has his economic populism vanished, his scapegoating has grown ever more vicious. What his supports voted for, in short, is not what they got. The upshot is not reactionary populism, but hyper reactionary neoliberalism" (26). Nevertheless, neither Clinton, a neoliberal figure, nor Trump, in theory a populist figure but in practice a neoliberal one, could answer the call for a hegemonic order. Lamenting Clinton's loss or championing Biden's victory does little but "reinstate progressive neoliberalism," which, as Fraser sees it, would "recreate...the very conditions that created Trump" (28).
Fraser rejects neoliberalism and celebrates the populism of 2016, even as she demarcates the Sanders populism from the Trump populism. For Fraser, "The burning question is whether that mass can now be melded together in a new counterhegemonic bloc. For that to happen, working-class supporters of Trump and of Sanders would have to come to understand themselves as allies--differently situated victims of a single 'rigged economy,' which they could jointly seek to transform" (29-30). This is close to Todd McGowan's notion of emancipation that he develops in two wonderful books: Emancipation After Hegel and Universality and Identity. In short, McGowan argues for an expression of emancipation grounded on a shared recognition of lack. That is to say, what we share, in fact, the only characteristic we share is the constitutive lack that defines subjectivity.
Fraser, though, is not a psychoanalytic thinker, nor is she necessarily a Hegelian thinker. For Fraser, this new populist hegemony must consist of a collection of particular identities. She writes, "Renouncing the progressive-neoliberal stress on personal attitudes, it [the progressive-populist bloc] must focus its efforts on the structural-institutional bases of contemporary society. Especially important, it must highlight the shared roots of class and status injustices in financialized capitalism...it must link the harms suffered by women, immigrants, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people to those experienced by the working-class strata now drawn to right-wing populism" (35). This is close but insufficient. I want to be clear: Fraser's idea is far better than the reactionary, conservative politics of Donald Trump, and it is also better than neoliberalism, but it defines inclusivity as a collection of distinct particulars instead of seeing beyond those particulars. This is important because even if a political project wants and attempts to be as inclusive as possible, it cannot include everyone. New categories of people, new subjective experiences, cohorts, and sub-cohorts emerge every day. This model of inclusivity will always ensure that someone is outside of this progressive-populist bloc. It is far better to gravitate toward what we all lack, that constitutive lack that defines subjectivity.
I have recently thought about how we should conceptualize and subsequently frame what I hope follows neoliberal hegemony. After reading Fraser, I ask the following questions: When are we egalitarian enough? Why focus on positive recognition? Is positivity (what we can have) more palatable than what we cannot have (what we lack)? None of these questions are to suggest that we should stop at any point, that any expression (as limited as so many are) of egalitarianism is enough, and I think this is the problem I have with Fraser's argument. It hinges on the notion that we must build coalitions from disparate groups instead of recognizing the single quality or characteristic we all share. Again, I think Fraser gets close. She understands how so many people of different races, creeds, sexual orientations, so on and so forth suffer from the tyranny of neoliberalism. But her solution hinges on seeing these groups of people as inherently different, which, of course, on many levels they are. What I want is a recognition of what we share to go deeper than neoliberalism. This gets me close to essentializing the human condition, I know, but I am prepared to argue that the problem is much deeper than neoliberalism.
June 25, 2021
Fraser has put out a more or less clear and concise booklet here. I wouldn't exactly consider it breaking new ground in the formulation of our contemporary political scene (and I have it on good authority that this one is "mostly a rehash of her previous work," and "only worth reading if you're unfamiliar with her," which is true for me), but I do like her formulation of distribution and recognition. It, like this pamphlet, is more or less clear and concise, and maps the territory in an original and revealing way. Forty pages plus an interview: worth the cover price, as they say.
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