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for all the good in Adam Curtis' latest, the fundamental problem with his worldview is his apparent unwillingness to actually address the reasons why we live in the 'strange times' that we do, and why things seem to be getting worse and 'nobody has any answer about what to do'
there are deeper and more complex reasons, of course, and some of his favourite hobby horses - individual vs collective, revolutionaries vs managers etc - have a lot that is correct about them, but they're far from sufficiently explanatory. some he ignores: really not complicated
the most obvious reason why we're at this 'standstill' is that the middle-classes may feel the effects of a worsening system in some ways, but misdiagnose it (hence: wellness, self-oriented mental health etc.) - but are ultimately too content and scared to reconsider their values
they may feel squeezed but they ultimately feel well enough served, and they might even feel highly protective of what little they've got (hence liberals and those irrationally clutching their company health plans) - or they seek myth-based regeneration, as with Trump supporters
frightened, they fall back to old certainties - or if they're not frightened (which a lot of people realistically aren't) they largely replicate the values of the structures that are conditioned to navigate because doing so appears to serve them well enough.
you might have to accept a number of limitations and humiliations - but who doesn't, right? that's just the fundamental reality of the world, intrinsic to being human. you don't get the spouse you want, you also don't get the job or life you want. but "you get what you need"
so long as you can access the odd vacation, you got your electronic distractions, enough money to put your kids in private school, you get a nice thing for yourself every so often, you feel you're building some sort of future...that all adds up to powerful motivated reasoning.
the people in this position - probably around 40% or more of society - are deeply committed to more or less keeping things as they are. they've 'bought in' far enough that to not want to protect what they've worked for would be an irrational choice.
these are the people, the power bloc, that ultimately seeks to block any real reform or reform movements (sanders, corbyn etc) - even piecemeal or incremental. they are the blairites, the clintonites, the liberals. they largely have professional or semi-professional backgrounds.
and as much as we can and should blame the elites who ultimately dominate social life to their enormous favour, it is this large middle-class that I honestly believe are not unlike the ancien regime aristocrats. they would sooner crash the entire system before reforming it
this is also where you need concepts like hyperreality, the system of objects, the spectacle and so on to understand how this middle-class is both subject to and maintain their fantasia and aloofness to the real condition of the world. like the aristocrats they have turned inward
the left is also so far from guiltless in this. we (certainly I) live much the same fantasia as do the middle-class liberals. we can also diagnose many of the problems that others blithely look past, but we are too beaten down and pessimistic due to our own leftist cul-de-sacs
the left seems to only be able to serve up warmed over 'solutions' straight from the first half of the 20th century: hammer and sickle twitter that falls towards certainties they can restart the communist project, without really any real analysis or solution to what went wrong
so they fall into their own mythologies, certainties, belief that somehow political will alone is all that is necessary for transforming the world. its ultimately a historical revivalist society, little different in many ways from civil war reenactors. everyone sees this but them
then you have rose twitter, which ultimately offers just a more hardcore social democratic redistributionist politics. it's been tried many times in major countries, as recently as the early 80s in France. it fell apart for readily understood reasons. how is it to work this time?
there are gestures - it's not like this is news to left policymakers or serious theorists - and there were great new ideas in Corbyn's two manifestos. but that the capitalists ultimately hold the hammer in capitalism is best ignored. we'll wing and a prayer it because what else?
the most fascinating thing to emerge from Corbyn's defeat is actually how little the 2019 performance had to do with Corbyn himself. in the post mortem analysis labour canvassers found that the policies were largely very popular, it's just few believed such things were possible.
the pessimism - which is so bound to capitalist realism that its hard to know where one ends and the other begins - that permeates all of society is also well-entrenched in the left intelligentsia - and not at all necessarily for the wrong reasons.
anyone who follows closely enough to the logic of the grand theorists of the 20th century (many deserving their perch) - Adorno, Althusser, Baudrillard, Foucault amongst others- will discover the frightening determinism of complex systems & the inability of thought to overcome it
Althusser ended up in a cul-de-sac of his own making (though one that remains quite intellectually sound) because he could not see enough roll for human agency in society's creation. he ultimately abandoned his project, seeing no road forward.
Baudrillard might have grown too confident that superstructure determines base (and I think he might've revised had he lived long enough), but the further you pierce into his often profound work, the more you come to realize how much of what he diagnoses is likely permanent
Foucault was far more sophisticated than many of his followers who - reared in capitalist realism and pessimism - have simplified his message to that of just 'power is everywhere and diffused' that has led to not-entirely-unwarranted quietism
I've been recently rereading Adorno's Minima Morelia, and its interesting how it's likely far more relevant today than it was when he wrote it: the dynamics he articulates have only grown much louder since the 40s.
he looks at an unconscious civilization, largely kept in perpetual unawareness of how strange and sick it is, how unfreedom is reimagined as freedom, how seeking advantage permeates nearly everything. he accurately sees the forces that led to the holocaust in the smallest places
and in justifiable despair, especially due to the life circumstances he's in, it becomes clear he doesn't believe much will change and that it's unlikely that thought alone can actually overcome these structures and overwhelming forces. the soviet project's failures weigh heavily
and then it kinda grows cold and hopeless in the academic/intellectual world. endless diagnoses on the structures that dominate us, but exceedingly few roadmaps to overcoming it. the field turns to niche analysis, offering little in strategy or form to work towards.
this tendency goes as far back as Marx too. his desire to avoid 'the cookshops of the future' makes sense given the harebrained socialist utopian proposals at the time. "we'll figure it out when we get there" seemed most reasonable. it also led to many of the left catastrophes
