Politics is Everywhere, yet Nothing Seems to Change

Anton Jager asks a piercing question on the jacket of his new book  Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization Without Political Consequences:

"What happens when politics is everywhere, yet nothing seems to change?... [P]ublic life has become infused with protest, spectacle and moral urgency … Private passions overflow into politics but rarely build enduring power."

Jager argues that the Old Left, whatever its shortcomings, succeeded in winning power and then using that power to make changes in social structures and policies, when it combined two things together.  Those two things were (1 ) 'POLITICIZATION'  -- Collective Action to challenge and defeat powerholders and the institutions that exploit, oppress or hurt groups of people; and  (2) 'INSTITUTIONALIZATION' -- Enduring organizations of two types, Political Leadership and Social Membership, that together fostered a Collective Consciousness, especially in the working classes. 

In today's Left, there is lots of politicization -- Every personal problem is also a political one, and results in a mix of social media individual agitation and spontaneous protest mobilizations around the Outrage of the Day.

But there is very little institutionalization -- There are some left populist electoral political parties, and there are lots of activist groups that you can join by going to their meetings, but both of these are understood to be spontaneous getting together of individuals to accomplish short-term, immediate issue ends. 

Jager asserts that today's society is marked by weak social bonds between individuals.  In the past, people who wanted to change things became members of democratic mass organizations and political parties that developed a collective consciousness and theory and policy that all members subscribed to and followed. 

Today people spend a good part of their lives living alone, working alone, and even playing (online) alone.  We develop strong individual tastes and hobbies and preferences and values and beliefs and habits that make up our chosen lifestyles.  Today's Left does not try to change this, but embraces it.  Opt in, opt out, and then opt in again with a partly different set of individuals later.

Jager explains: "Hyperpolitics… is rooted in a society in which exit options abound and citizens find it easy to move from one institution to another.  Just as employment has become more precarious in the postindustrial era, abandoning a family, a relationship, a party, or a circle of friends is a much less demanding process [than it used to be].  [E]ase of exit produces a society in which all dimensions of life are subject to short-term logics… [I]ndividuals relate to their affiliations as investors at the stock exchange, allocating resources and withdrawing them once the return on investment is no longer guaranteed". (p10)

Jager argues, and I agree, that there is one big problematic consequence of individualistic, voluntaristic, activist politics.  Advocates Without Members, Theda Skocpol calls it.  The Left does little or nothing to build the Collective Consciousness of the social groups, especially the working class, whose interests it seeks to champion, and to do that by helping build out mass membership organizations like unions or community groups where political consciousness raising can be centered. 

Consciousness is raised in each campaign or [set of] protest[s] but it does not endure.  There is no transmission belt of Political Leadership organizations and Mass Membership Organizations through which individual members of those social groups can be politically educated, and trained to be more theoretical analysis guided and strategy-tactics knowledgeable leaders of their own struggles.   

Consider just a few of the most successful Left campaigns or protests of recent decades.  The Seattle anti-globalization WTO protests and the local and international World Social Forums that followed.  The millions who protested at gatherings of the international organizations like the IMF and WTO and G7 and European Bank that impose Structural Adjustment Programmes and austerity policies.  The world-wide marches to oppose the invasion of Iraq, and later Afghanistan.  The Arab Spring in Tunisia and then Egypt and then other Middle East countries.  Occupy Wall Street and the dozens of copycat Occupy actions in cities in many countries championing the Ninety-Nine Percent against the One Percent.  All the protests against Trump and his many terrible policies.  The #MeToo movement against sexual abuse of women.  The Black Lives Matter protests after the police murder of George Floyd.  The anti-ICE protests in Minnesota.  The campus movements against the genocide in Gaza. 

All of these major collective actions have almost certainly changed the thinking of millions of individuals.  They will have radicalized many of the participants, and converted them individually into long-term committed activists.  But they have by and large not been followed up by the building of bigger and better organized left political leadership organizations or mass membership workplace/occupation and community organizations.  Lots of politicization, not much institutionalization. 

What can we do differently and better to change this?  In several articles coming soon, I will look at more detailed examples of both spontaneous mass protests and efforts to build new left populist electoral political parties.  I will draw some conclusions about what to do, both more of and less of, and what are some ideas for better.