Why there is no alt-left

[BainsBane]

33. Thanks for your thoughtful response

In some ways international mechanisms have freed capital from the confines of regulations at the level of the nation state. I don't think the solution to what that means for workers in countries like the US are the simplistic solutions some politicians have offered. Failing to join TPP has not solved the problems of capital flight or outsourcing. In fact, China has responded to the void by creating bilateral trade agreements with far worse terms for workers and the environment. The battle over TPP, it seems to me, was very much backward looking, an attempt to rewrite the past, which is impossible.

Just as capital is international, so is exploitation of workers and the poor. Claims about opposition to neoliberalism ring hollow to me when the focus is entirely on the economic standing of the US middle class.The US has pushed and benefited from neoliberalism for decades now. In 1973, it installed a military government in Chile that promoted neoliberalsim--and US economic interests in particular--by selling off national holdings. That practice was replicated throughout Latin American. Yet those are the years of US middle class prosperity the people hurling neoliberal as an insult say they want to return to. Their opposition is not to neoliberalsim but the decline of American empire, to the fact that globalization has gotten to the point where the American middle class no longer reaps advantages as great as in earlier decades.

I believe what we are seeing is not anything radical at all, but rather an effort by the largely white middle class to demand that government pay attention to their interests. There is nothing wrong with that. It's a perfectly reasonable position. What is off-putting to me, and I believe ultimately undermines equality, is the way those efforts are presented in absolute terms: claims of promoting equality while demonstrating hostility to the concerns of anyone but themselves, for example. If people truly value equality, it means more than assuming that their own concerns are universal. It means a willingness to listen to others and build coalitions that include the interests of those other groups. We've seen fierce resistance to doing so. Not only that, we also are seeing an undercurrent that is seeking to roll back gains in civil rights and women's rights, under the mendacious pretext that it is somehow necessary for "equality." In such discourse, equality is not in fact equality for all but the economic interests of a minority, a minority that already averages incomes well in excess of those whose rights they demand take a back seat. As a result, I've concluded that the fundamental concerns are either political power for a particular faction and/or the narrow economic interests of one group to the exclusion of the majority. In both cases, the language of leftism serves more to obfuscate and justify than communicate or forge solidarity.

It seems to me that just as capital crosses international boundaries, so should resistance to it. I believe an insular focus on nation to the exclusion of exploitation around the world and the way in which the US has benefited from its position at the core of international capitalism is neither effective or honest.