Aufhebunga Bunga
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/128/ BACKLASCH! ft. Anna Khachiyan
🕑 Added 2020-06-16 07:11:00 +0000 UTCOn culturally conservative critics of capitalism.
Neoliberalism’s fragmentary and atomising tendencies have gone too far. In response, some right-wingers have turned against the market. At the same time, there’s a (marginal) tendency on the left turning against cultural liberalism. Are we witnessing a major political realignment underway? What is the substance of these "culturally conservative" critiques, and do they offer anything new, beyond what people like Christopher Lasch advanced decades ago?
Readings:
- The new intellectuals of the American right, Nick Burns, New Statesman
- The Problem of Hyper Liberalism, John Gray, The TLS
- The Real Class War, Julius Krein, American Affairs
- Socialism in One Country, David Runciman, LRB (on Maurice Glasman & Blue Labour)
- The idea that the British working class is socially conservative is a nonsense, Kenan Malik, The Guardian
- Zero to One, Peter Thiel (pdf)
- The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, Daniel Bell (pdf)
Comments
Daniel Petrovic
The only problem is that when Anna says, "the left" I am not sure what she means.
Shatner's Bassoon
Lots of food for thought in the show and in the reading list. What it made me think is this ... when you're dissatisfied with the present it's easier to imagine that things were better in the past than it is to imagine that things will be better in the future (because there was something in the past, but there isn't anything in the future, yet). So in bad times, which I think it's safe to say we are in, conservatives will have the advantage over progressives, and if the left insists on fighting the same old culture war, it will lose. For all that, I don't think it would be a good idea for the left to embrace 'cultural conservatism', and I don't find the Blue Labour idea very convincing, overall. What the left does need though is some kind of ethos. Easier said than done, I know, but the ethos of the left at the moment seems to boil down to one thing: guilt - and that isn't very attractive.
