The following observations had their origin in an exchange I had with a friend, some of whose ideas about, and attitudes towards, politics and human freedom I saw – rightly or wrongly – as being false (the ideas) and counterproductive (the attitudes).
1. Attitudes
For me politics is a boring necessity which, at its best, runs in the background. Enthusiasm for politics is always a danger signal.
Such enthusiasm may manifest itself rhetorically or be rhetorically generated, but I am not condemning rhetoric per se. Rhetoric is an inevitable feature of any communication which incorporates a human element and engages the emotions. You can’t avoid it, and political talk – which is often designed to persuade or (let’s face it) to manipulate – is always going to be rhetorical to some extent.
So I am not criticizing people for utilizing rhetoric in the political sphere so much as for believing it – for falling for their own or other people’s rhetoric. Doing so, they are often implicitly seeking in politics something which politics or political action cannot, in the end, provide: that is, some kind of deep satisfaction or “salvation”. They are turning politics into a religion-substitute. This is a very dangerous thing to do.
Emotional satisfaction is a personal rather than a political matter and is best sought, I believe, in interpersonal relationships and personal, non-political activities and practices (work, hobbies and “creative” activities, walking, sitting in the sunshine, etc.). When people get (or seek to get) their deepest satisfactions from political or, more broadly, from ideological beliefs and activities, something is amiss.
2. Romanticism and politics
I keep seeing not only ideological (that is, political and personal-value-based) but also metaphysical elements in the political views of activists both of the left and the right. Much has been written about the implicit (and in my view dangerous) metaphysics of Marxism but right-libertarians – with their views on natural rights and their fetishization of freedom – are also committed to their own, ultimately empty and baseless, metaphysical ideas.
The origins of many current ideological fashions can be traced to the 19th century and the Romantic movement. Many Romantic ideas carry religious and metaphysical baggage deriving from Biblical as well as classical sources (Plato, the Stoics). It took me some years to see my own Platonist and Romantic commitments and assumptions for what they were – and so let go of them.
One’s views on art and human creativity and action need not have a metaphysical dimension but Romantic aesthetics certainly does, and these ideas have and still do play into political thinking in unfortunate ways. I am not saying that we, as individuals, can’t find deep satisfaction in creative activities at a personal level. My point is that no political solution can ever alter the underlying realities and imperatives of social and economic life and deliver the sorts of universal freedoms and satisfactions which are typically promised by radical, progressive or libertarian ideologies.
3. The current situation
Ideologies are real in the sense that they motivate political action and affect the way people interpret history and current events. They are essentially action-oriented, reality-distorting mechanisms and are worse than useless as analytical tools.
The “system” we currently find ourselves in is not capitalism, at least in the historical sense of the term. Western capitalism had deep cultural roots and was associated with certain patterns of thought and behaviour which no longer prevail (work ethic, deferred gratification, thrift, certain religious ideas, etc.). It involved the slow accumulation and deployment of actual capital, “creative destruction”, unprofitable companies being allowed to fail, and so on.
This is nothing like what we are witnessing today where everything is driven by debt and derivatives and there is an unholy alliance between heavily indebted governments, central banks and financial institutions. Markets are grossly distorted. Currencies are losing purchasing power. The financial system has become detached from economic reality.
The seeds of the current crisis were sown when the USD’s link to gold was finally severed in 1971. Or actually before that: in the fiscal profligacy of the 1960s which made the suspension of the Bretton Woods arrangement necessary.
Governments and central banks have played a major role in creating the current perverse and dysfunctional system, but other groups have also been involved (Wall Street bankers, certain business people and billionaires, NGOs, big tech and media). The system – such as it is – is now collapsing.
There will be inevitable pain.
