First rate analysis of current political reality.
"Neoliberalism has largely succeeded in destroying any concept of a society of coherent groups, replacing it with a mass of alienated, utility-seeking consumers, compulsorily ascribed to newly-invented and marketed “identities.” Political parties these days operate like product manufacturers, targeting market segments with differential advertising. Understandably, therefore, the “consumers” of politics move from party to party as they might move from brand to brand. A fractured society will inevitably produce a fractured political system, and there are no technical solutions to that. In the end, all genuine political struggles are articulations of social struggles, by, or on behalf of, authentically existing groups. So this year we commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the crushing of the 1984 miners’ strike in the UK; the last stand of organised labour against the brutalities of Thatcherism. But what was striking about that episode was the social solidarity within and between mining communities: the men manned the picket lines and supported other strikers while the women somehow kept families together and food on the table. I suspect that for anyone born after, say, 1980, this must sound like a historical novel. The social, and even family structures have long disappeared, and these days feminists would be bused in to explain to the women that their real enemies were their husbands and the patriarchy, not the government and the employers.?"
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/the-machine-stops
Posted by: JAB | Sep 7 2024 19:44 utc
