Of Carlo Freccero

THE SELF-CRITICISM OF A CERTAIN LEFT (N.D.R.)
Source: The Manifesto
The left is in crisis today and is wondering how it could speak to the new populisms to lead them back to the tracks of an elitist democracy that resembles an oligarchy more than a democracy in the strict sense.
Vice versa, even when he says he wants to listen to the malaise of which populism is an expression, the left entrenches itself in the clichés of political correctness. While, In my opinion, an objective self-analysis would be enough to understand things from another angle. The question is what the left is today and what the left once was? Because there has been such a radical change? I already know the answer. We were wrong. What if we are wrong now?
In any case, reflect on what the left was at its origins, already contains the answer to the problem of populism today.
Before, right-wing populism didn't exist because many of the instances of today's populism were on the left. And the growth of people's rights was not considered reactionary, but progressive.
The great fracture on the left begins with the so-called third way and the complete surrender of progressives to neoliberalism. Since then we have been immersed in the single thought to the point of having lost the memory of ourselves.
In the 1968 I was twenty years old and left-wing. What did it mean to be left-wing then?? Believe in class struggle and class consciousness. No one thought then that there was anything wrong with the people elites they had to “straighten up” for the good of the people themselves. It was the people who, becoming aware, he could and should lead society. And this concept, before the left, it is democratic.
What it means to be on the left today?
Be politically correct. Accept the unique thought uncritically and believe, presumptuously that, as holders of the unique thought, the elites must lead an ignorant and rude people, annoying because of his lack of education.
It is true, this people, the people who gather under the label of "populism" have nothing to do with the concept of "class consciousness" on the basis of which, instead the Marxist proletariat was considered capable of making the best choices for society as a whole. But it is still a people who express a malaise, which captures contradictions that are real and dramatic, in the idyllic narrative of the unique thought that sees neoliberalism and its diktats as "the best of all possible worlds".
As for "political correctness" education that distinguishes the elites of the people and which should constitute the reason for their superiority over the people, we are sure that it is "true" and is not rather the result of propaganda?
Since I have been studying propaganda I no longer believe in political correctness. The human rights to which we have sacrificed social rights, They look like they came straight out of the Overton Window to me, a methodology to influence public opinion with a gradual and progressive brainwashing.
What's left on the left??
The apparent solidarity for the least. Today the attention that yesterday was paid to the proletariat, is paid to migrants. It is clear that using language like that of the League and denying any form of solidarity is disturbing, scandalous.
But at least it draws attention to a phenomenon on which, like others considered "natural" with a unique thought, we don't ask ourselves any questions. For the elites, migrants do not constitute a problem because they reside in other neighborhoods and undermine jobs and wages that are the prerogative of the classes most unprepared for neoliberal competition. But precisely by placing ourselves on the side of migrants and their rights, what greater right should we recognize them, if not the right not to emigrate, not to risk their lives on improvised boats, not to suffer violence and abuse, not to know the contempt and racism of societies that would not want to welcome them?
I am amazed to see that left-wing do-goodism is limited to welcoming but never raises the problem of the causes. Because there are so many migrants today? Because Syrians and Libyans who enjoyed a high standard of living until the intervention of the West, today they are refugees in a foreign land? Are they perhaps not victims of that "political correctness" that forces us, as Westerners on continuous peace and solidarity missions to restore democracy to countries still outside the rules of neoliberalism? It's not about "helping them at home" but leaving them alone in their home.
The obtuse populist opposition to immigration, However, it signals a problem that traditional leftists miss, Why, in the order of discourse of single thought where everything is "natural", and everything is "irreformable" and the only possible response is not conscience, but charity.
But being left-wing cannot be reduced to a charitable attitude, rather, it requires a different vision of society, compared to the current order.