The Left Is Dead! Long Live the Left!

Something Wicked New This Way Comes

This is a call for a new New Left. Or is it a new new New Left? It’s hard to keep track of where we are. Let’s just describe it as post-late stage neo-leftism, to keep it simple. But that is starting to sound a bit metamodern. So, to be sincerely serious, let’s have an important chat about the state of the left, one adult leftist to another.

To start, the economic left and the political left are too narrow in their concerns and understanding, as stuck in stodgy ways of thinking. All the old calls for revolution are beginning to feel tired. At this point, we are going through the motions, but without much conviction. Maybe we need to revolt against our narrow thinking about revolution.

Plus, there is the problem of illiberal ‘leftists’ (tankies, elite vanguard, etc) and inegalitarian ‘liberals’ (neoliberals, right-libertarians, etc), especially when fighting each other, as part of a staged political spectacle of divide-and-conquer. Maybe they could mutually destroy each other — that would solve that problem. But what would take their place?

On the other hand, we could interpret it as a lover’s spat. Then they’ll make up and, to follow along with this fantasy, they’ll passionately embrace one another in the heat of the moment. Who doesn’t want a happy ending? In that case, what will be their love child? The possibilities are many.

Preparing For the Promise of the Pre-Post-Left

As a disreputable member of the Left, we like to complain about the Left, which means we are a perfectly normal leftist, as representative of a fine leftist tradition. That is the whole point of the Left, after all; to not only point beyond the right-wing status quo but to point beyond itself as well. The Left is a process, ever becoming. It simply guides the way to something else.

As such, there is no real Left because, the moment another Left is proclaimed, we are already moving onto the next Left. This is when the next New Right puts on the shed skin of the last Old Left, to hide from sight it’s rotting flesh. But the odor is undeniable. Still, the reactionary right plays a useful role in this manner, like a rabid wolf at the heels of the Left propelling it into new realms.

This brings us to what kind of Left we should be looking for in this moment and over the coming decades. Some of us have had a fondness for what could be called the Weird Left. An example of that is Robert Anton Wilson with his guerilla ontology, a liberationist impulse as a moving target. But it’s definitely not part of the legitimate Left, as there is no political project attached to it. And it’s hard to know what it could mean now.

Then there is the Dirtbag Left (e.g., Chapo Trap House), similar to the Idealist-Turned-Cynic Left (e.g., George Carlin); both of which are spawn of the much older Radical Left (e.g., Thomas Paine) and Working Class Left (e.g., Eugene V. Debs). These are often associated with white men and so sometimes get dismissed. But one could easily link them to the old Hardcore Black Left (e.g., Fred Hampton) that didn’t mind allying with poor whites or anyone else (e.g., Rainbow Coalition).

For the sake of balance, let’s bring in the old Religious Left as well, such as Christian socialists (e.g., Francis Bellamy). It’s still around, if it gets ignored in the mainstream and often ignored even by other leftists, largely because the Religious Right sucks all the oxygen out of that room. But maybe, in how the elite media and elite parties suppress the Religious Left, it tells us something about what the establishment fears.

There is a potent move that can be made in pointing out the radical egalitarianism in some of the original Christian texts (Stephen J. Patterson, The Forgotten Creed). After all, having fled from the consequences of the English Civil War and European oppressions, numerous religious dissenter groups, many of them radically egalitarian or even proto-leftist (anti-authoritarian, anti-elitist, anti-corruption, etc), filled the American colonies and, combined with Deists and such, fought in the American Revolution (Matthew Stewart, Nature’s God).

Keep in mind that the original secularists, abolitionists, etc were most often religiously motivated. Plus, in the Weird Left, there has always been a spiritual undercurrent that evades the stiff and humorless dogmatism of the Materialistic Left, economic and political. One can find the spiritual component being revived in the Integral Left, along with its bastard child, the Metamodern Left. Maybe there is something of value to be carried forward, if ever in new forms.

What is the Left? What is Its Purpose?

Religious egalitarianism was the precursor for the early leftist strain of economic and political egalitarianism, more fully voiced and secularized in the French Revolution. It touches upon how our shared humanity is enmeshed in the greater shared world: environments, conditions, systems, structures, hyperobjects, transgenerational effects, and other shared factors. We are citizens of the world (i.e., group consciousness), as exclaimed by the likes of Thomas Paine with his actions putting force to his words.

To bring it into another area of thought, this systems thinking and universalistic approach could be understood in relation to a different kind of mentality: 4E cognition (embodied, embedded, enacted, extended), 5E cognition (plus ecological), and 7E cognition (plus emotional and exapted). That overlaps with the bundle theory of mind, in contrast to the ego theory of mind. The bundled mind as anatta (empty self or non-fixed self) was first recorded in ancient Buddhist texts, though it’s resonant with hunter-gatherer animism and dividualism.

All of it challenges the ideological realism of identity, . It makes one wonder about a revolution of the mind, as John Adams spoke of, but at the level of a revolution of human nature. Maybe the Enlightenment Liberalism of individualism is reaching its endpoint. Yet though leftists speak of a different society, there are few leftist voices to articulate the alternatives. A vague collectivism isn’t enough. We can’t achieve escape velocity by merely aggregating individuals into a new form.

In social science terms, all of this is an expression of ‘openness’: openness to experience, openness to change, openness to intellect, etc. One of the core facets is cognitive fluidity. In the bundle theory, the boundaries of mind (and identity as well) are seen as dynamic, flexible, shifting, permeable, expansive, and inclusive. Without high ‘openness’, there is no liberal-mindedness (i.e., freedom); as without low social dominance orientation, there is no leftist-mindedness (i.e., egalitarianism). These boundaries of mind are co-extensive with the perceived and constructed boundaries in the world.

This is why all sides fight over who will have the power to determine property, ownership, borders, legal entities, infrastructure, natural resources, and the commons. The old school Municipal Socialists understood this in building public sewage systems and water treatment plants, at a time when hygienic conditions were a privilege of the wealthy. And it’s why the key pillar of communism is worker control of the means of production, similar to worker ownership and self-determination in anarchosyndicalism, along with co-operatives. Leftists used to build things to express their ideological identity and demonstrate their ideological values

But now most leftists seem like lost puppies, looking for someone to care for them. We on the broad Left lack a shared understanding of what we are about and so we lack capacity for forceful shared action. For various reasons, many leftists dismiss the social sciences, in the way they dismiss religion. Or else, if they have interests in this area, they separate it from the political and economic views, separate it from what is deemed more solid and serious, what involves a sober-minded understanding of historical materialism and/or real world issues of material concerns. Such interests, accordingly, are a private matter. It’s between you and your therapist, as your faith is between you and your God — not to be made into a public and political issue.

Some leftists perceive psychology as a fluffy distraction, as an unworthy product of weak liberalism, mere academic intellectuality at best. But we need to get past that stigma. We need a Social Science Left. That would put the Left on a solid scientific basis and also ground it in human nature. It would put legs under airy ideals and aspirations. We need to demand that our ideological claims are evidence-based, in the deepest and broadest sense. If there is no comprehensive basis for your ideology before the revolution, there won’t likely be any better and more stable foundation to build upon after the revolution.

What Do We Leftists Have to Offer?

This relates to another failure of conventional leftism. As religion has been abandoned to the Right, the same has been done for so much else. The attraction to alt-right influencers and far right leaders is they offer concrete advice about how to improve one’s life, some of it useful (better diet, exercise, clean your room, develop good habits, etc) and much else that is harmful (bitcoin worship, get-rich schemes, doomsday prepping, misogynistic dating advice, etc).

But reactionary self-help gurus (Jordan Peterson, Russell Brand, Joe Rogan, etc) at least pretend to care, and admittedly they do deal with real issues of concern to their audiences. If we leftists want to fight these hucksters and grifters, why don’t we on the Left offer other options? Liberals and leftists are drawn to helping professions, as healthcare workers, psychotherapists, social workers, nutritionists, and such. So, why don’t we use this as a vehicle for bringing a strong message to those desperately looking for answers? And why don’t we make a leftist view accessible to the average person in terms of their immediate needs?

We can’t go on promising people that their lives will be better after the next election or after the coming revolution. We need to become a Helping Left. Alternative health used to be the territory of leftist thought, offering people something else and empowering them with practical advice for making positive changes in their lives. That is all the more important now, at a time when the healthcare system is inadequate, unaffordable, or plain failed. Something like Obamacare is not much of an answer to people’s sense of economic desperation during a public health crisis and growing healthcare debt, with every major disease on the rise.

What do we on the Left have to show as compelling evidence that our ideology matters in the least? Sure, it’s great that we fight for people’s rights: minority rights, immigrant rights, women’s rights, trans rights, etc. And that has some practical value, such as fighting for protection against hate crimes, greater opportunities such as gays in the military, and ending discriminatory practices in numerous areas. But so much of this is invisible in everyday life. And as they say, it doesn’t put food on the table.

Part of the problem is we on the broad Left have allowed ourselves to be co-opted by the Democratic Party, as controlled by the DNC elites consisting of neoliberals and neocons who are owned by corporate interests and big money, along with bullshit like astroturf and greenwashing that misdirects activism (e.g., ). Our brand is a weaker and softer form of social dominance, a friendlier corporatism. Vote for the lesser evil who will be a steady hand to guide the empire through troubled waters. Whatever kind of Left we might want to be, it’s certain we no longer want to be the DNC’s Toady Left.

The old Left used to fight in people’s workplaces, as backed by national strikes with a strong sense of solidarity and class consciousness. In places like Milwaukee, the sewer socialists not only broke up organized crime and political corruption but built a public bakery to ensure all citizens had something to eat. The solutions that we’d implement today would be different, but the basic motive should be the same. We need to meet people on the level of their daily lives and everyday needs, while trying to survive in late stage capitalism and social Darwinism. We need to become a Practical Left, the Common Person’s Left.

What’s Left After the Left?

Some complain about the entire metaphorical framing of a left and right. They might claim such a distinction doesn’t really exist and that there is no difference between them, an argument often made by self-styled ‘centrists’ and ‘moderates’ (usually disguised right-wingers) who seek to defend the status quo against ‘extremists’ on all sides. While others preach that we should seek balance between the two sides, instead of treating them as opposing forces.

As a leftist, we could make a concession that leftism isn’t the ultimate goal even for leftists, and so of course we should hold such language lightly. We already mentioned that the whole purpose of leftism is to go beyond itself. There is nothing leftists would want more than a world no longer needing leftism for the reason that a right-wing no longer existed, though it would be hard for most leftists in the present to imagine a time in the future when that would be the case. But if offered such a scenario, one suspects the average leftist would gladly embrace and praise it.

Leftism has no purpose other than to change the harmful conditions that cause people to become reactionaries, conservatives, fundamentalists, authoritarians, social dominators, and dark personalities; and that puts them into power. The right-wing mentality and behavior, from a social science understanding, is simply a stress reaction, threat containment, and survival response. There is nothing evil about that. It’s simply how humans evolved amidst constantly changing conditions.

To that extent, that aspect of human nature is fine for dealing with temporary problems (e.g., COVID-19 shutdowns). We leftists can accept that as a tool in the toolbox and incorporate it into our leftist worldview, as we seek a better society. But no sane person would want to make an entire ideological system out of it, nor to live in such a fucked-up world where such problems were made permanent in order to maintain social control, as is the case with right-wing power.

Here is an important point. For most of human existence prior to permanent settlements, large-scale agriculture, and industrial capitalism, most stressors (predation, drought, famine, conflict, etc) were either minor, brief, or could be escaped by moving on to other areas with happier and healthier conditions. Humans were never stuck in severe chronic stress (i.e., shit life syndrome) for their entire lives and across generations (i.e., permanent underclass), as part of vast concentrated populations that were sickly, stunted, and desperate.

Hopefully, we’ll be able to change that and return to something closer to the evolutionary norm. As humans (a few examples still existing; e.g., Piraha), maybe we will at some point attain a post-scarcity society. The Scandinavian social democracies are approaching that stage. Along with that, maybe we’ll finally resolve or moderate all the other chronic stressors: inequality, segregation, sickliness, violent media, etc. When that happens we leftists can give up our role as leftists and we’ll find some better way to spend our time. We will then be the Retired Left, the Ex-Left.