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A call to passion for un-sexy politics
Living in a rich, northern society for any amount of time (let alone being born into one) brings the culture of narcissism that flows from consumer capitalism into sharp relief. Whether as children, adults or seniors, we are bombarded with cultural messages that focus on consumption for pleasure and to meet needs. The idea of the consumer society isn’t an evil in itself – human beings need material and intellectual nourishment to survive and thrive, and different cultures and communities in different ages have expressed these basic needs in a diversity of ways, and not always in ways that involve harm to one another. What makes our era of consumer capitalism distinct – and what urgently requires challenging and transformation – are the economic purposes, actors and consequences that our consumption serve. The purpose is largely unquestioned, undefined and blandly celebrated ‘economic growth’. The principal actors are transnational corporations, of course, and the principal consequences are increasing inequality and ominously, global planetary transformation through climate change, predicated on capitalism’s addiction to oil.
The economics of narcissism are self-sustaining, having been put in motion. Working like a force of gravity in society, a cultural pull exerted through constant messaging reinforces the idea that if we have the means, we can satisfy any whim we might think of, while many more whims we haven’t thought of are on offer, waiting to be satisfied. The message of life as the satisfaction of our material needs and whims is a call to the narcissism of consumer capitalism, where we ‘express’ ourselves through the purchase of products that are washed carefully for us in various identities and ideologies, to suit our varied tastes. This is a compelling set of messages. Who doesn’t want to satisfy their needs? Who wouldn’t like to satisfy their whims, or be shown new whims they might like to satisfy through consumption?
As a cultural force of gravity, most of us get pulled into consumer capitalism’s orbit. It’s quite possible that while coasting in this course – at varying levels of comfort, depending on our means – our thinking is affected. With the cultural pull to give attention to satisfying, or potentially satisfying, our needs and wishes at every turn through consumption, perhaps our view of our place in the world, in our society, becomes blurred. A recent book, The Ego Boom, explores the idea of a culture of narcissism at length, though not in the context of a critical take on its roots in capitalism, per se (for a primer on the latter perspective, one starting point would be C.B. MacPherson’s The political theory of possessive individualism).
Of course, narcissism plays well into a functional capitalist system, whose purposes, actors and consequences are not questioned, but simply accepted as part of a smoothly-running machine.
Narcissism is also the opposite of solidarity. The idea of engaging in the social project of expanding social, economic and cultural rights, of working against inequality, of using democratic means to help serve the interests of the majority of us in a sustainable way, rather than dominantly the minority of us in an unsustainable way … this type of idea is only realizable through collective action, through careful deliberation, dialogue and consensus-building. This important work has been pressed forward by the collective work of the left: the labour movement, women’s and civil rights movements, indigenous movements, and increasingly, the green movement – and all coming together – these are other forces of social gravity that have pushed forward different values and agendas than those trumpeted by transnational corporations and consumer capitalism. The left has continually refused to take the shape of our society, and its centres of gravity for granted, instead questioning its purposes, actors and consequences.
Something like the creation of the Canada Health Act is an example of the careful toil of the left to give life to an electoral movement that can help realize its values and vision, against and apart from the status quo. But electoral politics to realize necessary social transformation lacks the messaging pull of consumer capitalism. In fact, such projects appeal to the frank opposite of narcissism. They instead require solidarity. They don’t offer us a wish to satisfy our needs or whims; they invite us to care for others and the future of the planet, and to build movements, initiatives and projects that embody this care.
The work of electoral politics as a vehicle to realizing the vision of the left offers no gratification. It is hard. It does not appeal to our place in the orbit of consumer capitalism. And it is not sexy. Investing oneself in electoral procedures and initiatives demands careful attention and patience. Being aware of the pitfalls and possibilities of this arena requires a commitment to patently un-sexy types of political work. As opposed to this type of work, the preference for spectacles offers some instant gratification. The act of lashing out at the state as the source of all ills itself, for example – what I’ve called ‘state-hating’ – might be cathartic, it might feel sexy, but it is ultimately narcissistic. It can do nothing to help advance necessary social projects that require working within the state.
Now more than ever, and as always, we need a passionate left – and we need to direct that passion into un-sexy politics. Rules of procedure in meetings may make you gag. Parliamentary TV channels may get you sleepy. You may never have been to a local riding/district association meeting, or wanted to touch the door to one with a long pole. In order to move a left agenda forward, however, we need passionate people and energy behind, and inside, electoral movements on the left. They are our best chance for solidarity, and our best hope to transcend narcissism.
Once again, we have the assumption that the Black Bloc is a big obstacle to further political progress. It is true that there is an immense narcissism to pretending that smashing a window at Starbuck’s has any functional purpose but such trends are not the result of one pathology but many. Infantilism, another by-product of our consumer culture is a trend and basis to such actions. So is mindlessness, yet another feature and prerequisite of consumerism. Yet mindlessness is everywhere on the Left; the incantation of neo-pagan worship, the hours spent building paper puppets symbolizing nothing, the belief that ‘slacking’ is a form of resistance, the embrace of the drug culture, but mindlessness is also the faith that simply electing a social democratic government will achieve something. We have had various provincial NDP governments but once the global regimes of GATT, NAFTA, WTO, and their various other variations such as the forthcoming CETA have taken root, the NDP has done nothing at all. The NDP is not a vehicle to social change but an roadblock to anything greater at all. The NDP sends party robots to activist groups (ie ‘sandbaggers, speedbumpers’) to ensure that groups go nowhere. The NDP also recruits activists to become party stooges only to ensure that some MPP or MLA or deputy has a solid pension in the future.
We definitely need to do ‘unsexy’ political work but that involves researching, postering, staffing recruit tables, writing, speaking, etc but it has nothing to do with helping the NDP sell us out as it has almost always done. There is no evidence that the electoral process can overcome the global corporate edifice. The experience of the Lula sell-out in Brazil would also confirm that. What has happened in some of the Latin American countries is as much a function of the extra-parliamentary forces as it was electoral processes and those successes will face severe limits if the North American Left continues to run itself down various avenues of mis-direction as it does now.
We need a renewed commitment to rational thought and intelligent discourse but that is not found anywhere near a NDP meeting.
#1. Posted by Cornelius Froese in Winnipeg on August 10th 2010 at 3:29pm
Cornelius is right. Political work that is unsexy is required. But just because the NDP is unsexy doesn’t automatically make it the best vehicle for social change.
I’m a radical, and I’ve been in and out of the NDP. I’ve been to plenty of boring meetings working on radical organizing, and I’ve been to some boring meetings (which are worse in that they generally made me want to puke) in the short time I was in the NDP. The only difference was that when I was outside the NDP, these boring meetings actually accomplished something.
If electoral movements on the left are the best change for us to build solidarity, why is it that the NDP (lets face it, it’s what you mean by “electoral movements on the left”) is so absolutely uninterested in building solidarity with grassroots movements?
#2. Posted by Brian Latour in Winnipeg on August 12th 2010 at 10:00pm