No pasarán!(?) - the Left today

Thanks to the dissemination of silly Fukuyama's equally silly central thesis, we are all fed up with, and take for granted, the notion of the 'end of ideologies' -- capitalism excepted, bereft of its 'ideological trappings', at the very least up to the crisis of 2008.
Another worn-out cliché is the need to reinvent capitalism and the inevitability of profound reforms to the present European model of the social or welfare State.

A commonly-held standpoint of political and economic observers entertains the idea that all and any changes must be inward-looking and self-serving, to preserve the essence of capitalism as the 'lesser of all economic evils', just as representative democracy is -- rightly -- purported to be the 'lesser of all political evils'. 

Whichever paths capitalism might take, the widespread conviction -- an intuitive, irrational and desired one -- is that such economic system and its right-wing superstructure shall successfully adapt and evolve, until the next cyclical crises force further transformations down the road. 

An unforgiving dialectic? Certainly not a harmful genetic mutation of an organism perceived as autopoietic, or self-contained, rather the confirmation, most feel, of capitalism's destiny as the 'chosen' system, the one deemed to be the best and fittest through Darwinian natural-historical selection.

The outlook for the Left is far from promising.

The traditional working class has either disappeared or has become the recipient of sporadic crumbs fallen from the table of capitalism, a mirage in a desert with few oases. Those in the middle class just want to keep on spending beyond their means and only dream of becoming rich. Whereas the wealthy do not care one bit about the rest of society.

Conditions for social mobilization against rapidly increasing unfairness and inequality are lacking, and without active resistance it is difficult to foresee any erosion of the edifice of injustice, the veritable 21st century counterpart of the 'pyramid of exploitation', a symbol of the Industrial Age.

The examples of contemporary political struggle -- such as the anti-globalization movement and others, mostly restricted to single issues -- are still in their infancy, most being insufficient and some alas misguided or misdirected. Let us not forget that the Green movement had to wait for over 30 years before its message of environmental awareness became accepted.

A new political -- and ideological -- project is sorely needed. One that is truly progressive, libertarian and free from accommodations, stripped of complacency and immune to hybrid or 'third' ways. A project which aims to destroy capitalism insofar as to -- perhaps even -- 'save it from itself', in a fashion not dissimilar to that famous incident during the Vietnam War, when a Viet Cong village was 'destroyed in order to be saved'.

I am not stating anything new.

What project might this be? The current mainstream Left has no idea, nor does it seem to want to have one, a situation aggravated by the silent majority's refusal to contemplate changes to the status quo.

There is nothing innovative in this assertion either.

Unfortunately, as most serious political critics -- Noam Chomsky* comes to mind immediately, as the doyen of 'radical' thinkers who forgo momentary intellectual dalliances and genuinely attempt to create a systemic discourse within a coherent worldview and in the context of a hitherto untested alternative paradigm -- are generally ignored and frowned upon, we are rewarded with a panoply of so-called, or self-labeled, Left-leaning 'experts' and political 'commentators', who excel at pseudo-analysis and at what I might call 'mitigation theory': proposing austerity measures as necessary palliatives to the recurrent 'ailments' of capitalism, in their minds an otherwise healthy system.

Action has been replaced by illusion, and the future is being postponed, inasmuch as the will to think of, and to achieve, a better tomorrow is being thwarted. The politics of progress are more often than not completely subdued by the politics -- and policies -- of 'realism'.

I believe that unqualified respect is something that only those with the courage to act upon their convictions should be entitled to, those who practice what they say, who follow their utterances with deeds. If one does not possess such courage, or the capacity to act in accordance, then one should refrain from communicating grandiloquently in the public sphere.

Enough, I say, of talking heads and opinion makers elevated to positions of influence by the masses, wrongly convinced, poor folk, that they are listening to people with an iota of social conscience and the desire to lessen suffering.

Earnest resignation by the humble in the face of a tough reality is preferable to the self-righteous indignation of those who falsely claim to know how to effect change.

We may still console ourselves with the fact that the West enjoys a relatively free and democratic form of capitalism.

I hope that the unfathomable future does not follow a route in emulation of the Russian or East Asian forms of authoritarian capitalism.
In any event, we must theorize about new ways to confront capitalism. New revolutionary politics (of the non-violent persuasion, I should stress) are required.

*I do not mean to exclude other progressive public intellectuals. My apologies to, inter alia, Naomi Klein.

About the title: 'No pasarán!' ("They shall not go forward!") was coined by Dolores Ibárruri, 'La Pasionaria', a heroic figure of the Spanish Left. It was a powerful rallying cry of the Republicans during the Siege of Madrid by the Fascist forces of Franco.