What Bernie and the Left Need Now: A Radical Enlightenment (New Republic 2016) (original) (raw)
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The End of Enlightenment Liberalism?
The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 2023
Enlightenment liberalism has come under furious attack from multiple sources in recent years, including cognitive science, the social sciences, identity politics of the left, and populism and nationalism on the right. The notions of individual liberty, free speech, and broad rights protections operating under neutral procedural law has been tied to elitism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and oppressive capitalism. This article points out that recent criticisms from progressives and conservatives are not new. They were mostly formulated several decades ago. Further, they commonly create a straw liberalism, failing to recognize the complexity of the Enlightenment liberal tradition. They ignore the fact that the validity of the institutions and processes of liberalism can, indeed must, be accepted, regardless of criticisms of simplistic versions of liberal theory. For those liberal institutions and processes remain the only known means for controlling the forces of modernity on which we ...
This is the title of my book, which presents an original and comprehensive theory of political liberalism. The book will be published by Springer in 2016. This document contains the Preface.
The Reemergence of the Left in Contemporary Mainstream American Politics: The Case Study of Bernie Sanders’ Electoral Movement, 2020
Leftist movements in the USA have always emerged as a result of, a reaction to, and a struggle against circumstances of widespread disparity and socioeconomic biases. However, the American left-wing had undergone a long period of political absence and marginalization due to numerous factors. This dissertation thus set out to explore the contemporary resurgence of the left in mainstream American politics and the factors behind its recent emergence. The present study achieved its main research objectives by meticulously examining relevant literature and exploring the case study of Bernie Sanders’ presidential candidacies from different critical approaches to the Social Movement theory. The methodology followed in this research revolves around investigating the reasons behind the emergence of Bernie Sanders’ Electoral Movement based on using the following approaches: (1) the Relative Deprivation theory, (2) the Emancipatory theory, and (3) the Resource Mobilization theory. Accordingly, the inquiry engendered numerous key findings. First, the socioeconomic fallacies generated by ‘the neoliberal crisis’ created a political opening for an alternative ideological challenge. In this vein, the research inferred that the reemergence of the left is a symptom of the decreasing adequacy of the American sociopolitical system. Second, the case study analysis deduced that Sanders’ Electoral Movement shaped the youth and working-class’s contention with the system into a tangible electoral constituency. Hence, the resurgence of the left sprouted out of a culmination of public discontent with the socio-economic conditions and the neoliberal system which dates back to the Occupy Wall Street protests and the Great Recession. Third, the heavy and creative reliance on social media coverage helped spread awareness about the Movement’s ideas and agenda. Taking advantage of the freedom, inclusiveness, rapidity, and interactivity of the internet attracted, introduced, and recruited many people to the left. Overall, this research tried to provide an insightful reassessment of the status of the left in the United States. It critically presented as well a correlation between the phenomenon of resurgence and the American politico-economic neoliberal apparatus.
Politics: Tomorrow's values may be more radical than we think
Critical Quarterly, 1997
The unspoken but dominant wisdom in contemporary politics ± at least up to May 1997 ± is that each succeeding generation drifts further to the right. The absence of an engagement by young people with politics is deplored by middle-aged commentators in the liberal press who fondly recall their revolutionary vapourings at university in the 1960s and 1970s. The 1968 generation will go down in history as the most useless, self-indulgent, whinging, narcissistic bunch of good-for-nothings in world history. They inherited the best combination of democratic rights, economic well-being, and social protection known to history and utterly squandered it. The courtiers and creeps of France's ancien re Âgime in the late eighteenth century were models of progress and sensibility by comparison. Daniel Cohn-Bendit invited the students of the late 1960s and 1970s to undertake their long march through the institutions, and the result is there for all to see. Whether in business, in academe, in art or in Tory government, the reign of the meretricious, the poseurs, the turncoats and the glib phrase-and image-makers has conquered all. Since the 1968 generation got its hands on power and control over money, the world has got steadily worse, meaner, and more divided. The heroism of the fighters for democracy in South Africa or East Europe has been squandered and wasted as those in power in Washington and Brussels failed day by day to rise to the challenge of creating new institutional structures to consolidate the post-dictatorship societies. Across the Atlantic or Channel there is nowhere a hint of a George Marshall or a Charles de Gaulle. Sacrifice, discipline, responsibility, cooperation are gros mots ± swearwords ± for the 1968 generation. Whether of the Mitterrand±Clinton so-called left or the Thatcher±Gingrich right, the revolutionaries turned bankers, ministers and editors have added no value to the world save to their private bank balances. The problem of generation is now a major source of discomfort as the new political e Âlite in Britain seeks to find its bearings and to awaken
Agenda Publishing eBooks, 2018
Hilary Wainwright has written a wonderful and humanistic book in which she uses her extensive experience, obtained from a lifetime of dedication to the liberation of working people, to argue for a 'new politics' for the left. I would even go as far as to say that it is a book written with love and passion. In essence, this book is Wainwright's competent exploration of the assumption that an agent is born into a structure but also has the ability to change that structure, described in Critical Realism (CR) by the transformational model of social activity. Specifically, she argues, from a socialist perspective, that to achieve structural change for the better the agent needs not only to challenge the structure, but also to contribute their practical, everyday, creative knowledge to the process of designing and implementing transformed structure. In other words, she has tasked herself to investigate ways in which society can be liberated from the power-to-dominate constraints of capitalism; and she bases her approach on a view of society built on the power-to-transform of the united commons. Wainwright begins her project by exploring a new politics of knowledge; those who control knowledge have power. Currently, there is a general tendency to depend on elite knowledge power, where those who 'know best'the technocratscontrol the market and set governmental policy. However, what is often ignored is the practical knowledge of the commons. We can make a protest based on the shop floor knowing of the ineffectiveness of the system, and yet nothing changes. Why? Because it is assumed that the elitist technocratsand not the common peoplealways know best. Wainwright follows CR in seeing this governmental elite, technocratic use of knowledge as power-over (power 2) or power-as-domination. However, Wainwright suggests that social movements may be unaware of the structures and mechanisms in place that maintain inequality. Consequently, once the change has taken place, power-as-domination remains intact. This is a case of confusing change and difference, illustrated, Wainwright says, by Beatrice Webb, the Fabian leader who influenced labour policy and yet had little faith in the 'average sensual man'. Fabian, therefore, epitomizes the left leader who fails to value the tacit knowledge of the people. In part one of her book, Wainwright argues for a move away from 'power-over', to a more inclusive 'power-to' or 'power-to-transform', which critical realists describe' as 'power 1 '. She suggests that this move can be achieved if we enable the sharing of personal and collective tacit knowledge (what I/we can do). However, she arguesfollowing Michael Polanyithat it is difficult to share this tacit content of knowledge because those who possess it may find it hard to express, or to communicate, with others. This results in there being no alternative but to let the technocrats be the decision-makers. The objective then must be to find ways to share tacit knowledge. A way to achieve this can be found in the work of Paulo Friere. He develops a democratic process that ultimately strengthens citizens' resilience against the technocrat decision-maker; it gives grassroots power back to the community and brings tacit knowledge into civic discussions. This democratic process does not absent all the structures of powerwe cannot avoid issues of power all togetherbut it provides a method of extracting and utilizing those mechanisms of JOURNAL OF CRITICAL REALISM
Times are changing, so strategies need to as well. These are some preliminary thoughts about new potential strategy for the left - includes discussion of Historical Institutionalism, Cultural Hegemony, Reform vs. Revolution, and Communicative Rationality
Précis of "Renewing Liberalism"
1. The Book in Brief a. The Purpose of the Book The purpose of the book is to develop, articulate, and defend an original and comprehensive philosophical theory of the nature and justification of modern political liberalism. Modern political liberalism can be understood negatively, by contrast with the essential tenets of modern political conservatism, or positively, as a set of affirmative theses. The purpose of the book is best explained in the former way, the approach of the book in the latter. The essential tenets of modern political conservatism, which can be traced back to the work of Edmund Burke, are as follows: a preference for liberty over equality; an attitude of suspicion toward the power of the State; elitism; and respect for tradition and established institutions, coupled with a cautious skepticism of the idea of progress. The point of departure for the theory of liberalism developed in the book is the first of these, and in particular the interpretation of the concept of individual liberty which is assumed, often implicitly or unconsciously, by the modern conservative