Re: <nettime> Stealing the spotlight

[Felix Stalder via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

On 2/27/25 17:09, GM - tedbyfield via nettime-l wrote:
> The impulse to psychologize everyone and everything is baked *really*
> deeply into the liberal imagination. It’s a key part of how we got to
> where we are, and making it go away will be a key to how we untangle
> this mess.



Yeah, let's return to a more material analysis.

The regime whose ruins are now undeniable might well be called 
"unilateral neoliberalism". Unilateral in the sense that the US saw 
itself as having won the Cold War and facing no geopolitical 
competition. The order it tried to impose on the world was essentially 
neoliberal globalization: free trade, competition, capital mobility, 
sometimes advanced through a basically liberal framework (rule of law, 
private property and some level of human rights), sometimes through 
military means. If you remember the "humanitarian war" in Kosovo or NATO 
enlargement, these two things could be fused in strange ways.

The wheels fell off in 2008 and contradictions mounted. Geopolitically, 
China and Russia became strong enough to push back against this 
unilateral perspective, demanding a multipolar word. 2008 Russia invaded 
Georgia, then also on its ways towards EU and possibly NATO. China and 
Russia had, already in 2001, established the Shanghai Cooperation 
Organization, as the institutional basis for moving out of the 
Washington Consensus of IMF and Worldbank.

Internally, ramped up austerity undermined the legitimacy of public 
institutions, which has already been weakened by previous rounds of 
austerity and hollowing out of public-private relationships (ie. 
privatization and dependence on third-party funding). At the same time, 
quantitative easing created a new class of super-wealthy people who 
outgrew the liberal institutions which were supposed to regulate them 
(or the markets in which they operated).

Increasing volatility due to climate breakdown supercharged this breakdown.

None of this is new. We all know this, and how did we all laugh at 
Fukuyama's End of the History. Rightly so. But the liberal established 
really believed it, right to the end. And the left didn't really do its 
homework either, since its critique remained an essentially liberal. 
Think suing governments for their lack of climate action because how 
global heating does infringe on individual rights.

And this is also where the need to psychologize comes in. If you already 
know the rational structure of the world, then any fundamental critique 
is essentially irrational. Large parts of the left bought into it, 
turning themselves into technocrats, tinkering within the system, 
constantly forced to make compromises that we both rational and 
contradictory at the same time. Think of the Greens in Germany. (Of, 
course, there is no lack of more radical thinking, it is largely 
academic / art-based. That it's not entirely ineffective shows the 
hatred the new right has against it.)

So, what is happening now, is for all to see. In terms of geopolitics, 
it appears that the US is finally acknowledging the existence of a 
multipolar world. Weirdly enough by accepting, quite openly, the Russian 
version of it, centering around great power politics and zones of 
domination and exploitation. For Europe, this is a rude awakening from a 
self-induced intoxication of the self-serving platitudes governments 
have told themselves.

Internally, I think we are seeing, at least in the US, the formation of 
a new model. Many call it fascist. I am not convinced that this is a 
useful analogy (at least for the US, Europe might be different), even if 
there are many actual fascists now rising to power. Rather, as Quinn 
Slobodian suggested, Dubai or Saudi Arabia (under MBS) might be a better 
camparison [1]. Authoritarian societies, where a small group of people 
enjoy enormous riches while the majority lives in a state of precarious 
dependence (lose your job in Dubai, and you lose your visa next day), or 
extreme exploitation, lacking even fundamental rights. Also, these are 
societies that are socially extremely conservative, read patriarchal and 
racists, while aspiring to a technological hypermodernity. They are not 
exactly isolationist, but also not open in a liberal sense. This mix of 
capitalism and feudalism also goes well with Varoufakis' analysis of 
Technofeudalism, which is one of the major social bases that drive this 
model.

And they will succeed, no matter what the costs, if there is no 
alternative, and it's not the return to the liberal order.



[1] I can only recommend this episode of Dough Henwood's podcast. 
February 20, 2025 Anatol Lieven looks at the global dimensions of 
Trumpism • Quinn Slobodian muses on whether Trump is a neoliberal, and 
examines the three major strands of DOGE-ism
 https://leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html#S250220


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