Back to the Future: Resisting Fascist Capitalism's Great Reset

[Celerity]

Against plutocrats and autocrats, the progressive response must be active defence of equality—not as slogan, but also as material condition.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/back-to-the-future-resisting-fascist-capitalisms-great-reset



My fourteen-year-old daughter and I are devoted fans of dystopias. At times, given the world we are living in, I wonder whether encouraging this shared passion is such a good idea. I take comfort in the thought that, in most of these stories, the good eventually prevail: justice, solidarity, and the values that left-wing thought and movements have long defended.

The darker side of that consolation is well known. Victory rarely comes in time for many, and it is usually preceded by prolonged suffering, inequality, and injustice. If we look to history, the last victory in which we still recognise ourselves came after the horror of Nazism, the Second World War, and its inhuman epilogue in the form of a nuclear mushroom cloud. That extreme experience, combined with fear of the Soviet alternative, helps explain why political and economic elites accepted a shift in the model of capitalism that had already begun to take shape with Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s.

It also mattered that there were political parties willing to reform the system to improve people’s lives: some renouncing revolution, others resisting the recurring temptation to reopen the door to the far right under the illusion that it could be tamed. Above all, it was made possible by an exhausted yet hopeful population—the generation that gave rise to the baby boom.

That “Spirit of ’45” not only brought about welfare states in Western democracies; it also underpinned an international order based on multilateralism—albeit within the bipolar framework of the Cold War—and on respect for human rights, which in turn fuelled broad processes of decolonisation. Neither the social nor the geopolitical contracts of that era were flawless. The postwar social pact did not alter the sexual contract embedded within it. Nor was the so-called Liberal International Order as liberal or as universal as it claimed to be.

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[DJ Synikus Makisimus]

1. I think the most important bit in the article is toward the end

"Late fascist capitalism feeds on negative emotions because they guarantee engagement and adherence. Yet those same emotions can be channelled towards resistance and the construction of a better world.

Nothing that is happening is inevitable—not the advance of fascism, not the total commodification of life, not the hollowing out of democracy, not the dominance of predatory masculinity, nor the supremacy of the white male. These are political projects, sustained by very concrete interests, and as such they can be contested. History does not move in a straight line, but neither is it written in advance.
...
Against those who seek to convince us that inequality is natural, that force should replace law, and that democracy is an obstacle to efficiency, the progressive response cannot be resignation or retreat. It must be the active defence of equality, social justice, and human dignity—not merely as moral slogans, but as the material conditions for a life worth living and for a democracy worthy of the name."

Thanks for posting this, Celerity!