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Overview

Have you ever participated in a demonstration or protest rally? You may have felt good afterward, but did your actions bring about lasting change?

Probably not much. This is the underlying problem with modern-day left-wing politics. While such actions may give you a feeling that you’re doing something, they don’t have long term effects and are hard to judge in a world where capitalism and neoliberalism rule the day. So let’s look at how we got here and what can be done to move forward.

In this passage, you’ll find out why the economy is a complex system that defies simple fixes; how a group of fringe academics and intellectuals came to dominate mainstream politics; and why automating work will be good for workers.

Big Idea #1: The majority of current leftist politics is limited in both scope and impact.

Folk politics is a term used to describe local, direct action and small-scale approaches to politics. Examples of folk politics include movements like Occupy Wall Street, ethical consumption or any student occupation throughout history. These actions often fail to make structural change because they are not sufficient in today’s political climate.

The reason why folk politics is so popular is because its focus is on individual actions, rather than thinking about how to change the system. It puts feelings above critical thinking and strategy.

Folk politics isn’t wrong, but it doesn’t have a long-term vision. Folk politics is based on reacting to what corporations and governments do. It also loses sight of the bigger picture by focusing on single issues. A classic example of this is Live Aid in 1985, which raised money for famine relief in Ethiopia through celebrity-led events that appealed only to people’s emotions rather than their rationality. This approach led to more violence and even worsened the famine because some of the money ended up with rebel militias instead of those who needed it most.

Big Idea #2: Folk politics falsely simplifies the complex modern world.

Because of its focus on individual actions, folk politics does not have the long-term impact necessary to make real change. Additionally, it focuses on short-term goals that do not create lasting change. For example, if a corporation delays building a pipeline because people are protesting against it, they will just find another way to build it when no one is looking.

A lot of people are drawn to this kind of politics because it’s effective in the short term, but they don’t see the long-term consequences.

A major reason for this is that it simplifies complex global issues. Global society is a complex system, loaded with interlocking arenas like world politics, economics, climate change and globalization. For most people these ideas are difficult to grasp because the economy isn’t something you can directly perceive; instead it’s a collection of different actions, players and outcomes distributed across various systems.

When the systems that govern our lives are complicated and difficult to understand, it’s hard for us to relate to them.

Fredric Jameson, a cultural theorist, believes that conspiracy theories are popular because people feel alienated from the systems they live in. Conspiracy theories narrow perspective into one party as being responsible for all of society’s ills.

Conspiracy theories are popular because they give us an easy way to explain the complexity of situations. However, these theories don’t take into account our own roles in situations and oversimplify cause-and-effect relationships.

The same is true for folk politics. It appeals to people because it simplifies the complicated world by focusing on concrete actions that can be taken immediately. By doing so, it avoids dealing with complex global relations.