By LUIZ MARQUES*
Low rates of unionization and anti-capitalist militancy are signs of the decline of ideologies and politics: they symptomatize the collapse of democracy and the dawn of regimes of exception, fertile ground for the sowing of horror.
The word “politics” comes from the Greek polis and has always debated the principle of city organization and the views of social actors. Politics is not limited to the issue of power, but is expressed in the predominance of one social group over the others. In São Paulo or Porto Alegre, a divide overlaps the interests of mega-construction companies that see in the metropolises an opportunity to speculate and profit, with the genuine demands of the population, which fights for spaces of environmental conviviality, pluralism of ideas and different lifestyles. This polarization is the urban Gordian knot. What is new is the socio-intellectual trend that re-actualizes Pierre Birnbaum, in The end of politics, a book published fifty springs ago about the desire to reset tomorrow, to perpetuate the old hierarchies.
Between the 17th and 18th centuries, it was believed that reason was responsible for taking the lead in political and social renewal movements, as experts highlight when analyzing the period in Europe.. In the 1820th century, rationalism faded with the cascade of revolutions in the years 1830, 1848, 1871 and XNUMX. The narrative of ideologies entered the scene: the progressive ones that gave meaning to history and the conservative ones, which preached the natural and uninterrupted functioning of the social body.
In the 20th century, fascism galvanized Lampedusian reactionism in the face of the possibility of change. By renouncing the normative precept of philosophy and political theory, reason completely lost its autonomy and potential to change the game; it assumed an instrumental character. The prestige of pragmatism derives from what Max Horkheimer warned in eclipse of reason – “the reflection of a society that no longer has time to remember and meditate”.
A Realpolitik fills gaps to improve the present in situations of unfavorable correlation of forces, without exacerbating those confrontations that arise from the division into social classes. In theory, alliances and concessions in adversity follow a strategy of accumulating muscle for the reinvention of the future; when they do not stumble.
In the 21st century, the rise of the extreme right leads to the emptying of critical reflection, in exchange for anti-political subjectivism. The goal of solidarity in social relations vanishes into thin air. The useful becomes the category to represent reality and meet the urgency of the concrete. Americanism extols the utilitarian, the technological, the self-made man. Digital influencers monetize the fantasy of the entrepreneur who makes it on his own, without depending on government action. They make postmodern finalisms go viral: the end of class struggle, the end of ideologies, the end of politics. The end of the horizon.
A clear message
In the United States, quantitative methods are the criterion for revealing the truth. The University of Chicago encourages economists to use the term “behaviorism” instead of “social science” to dispel the socialist connotation and obtain funding from the federal government. What is not measurable or controllable is left on the shelf of metaphysics. The sociology of (lack of) knowledge impacts political disputes by abstracting the vocation for change, in the hope of attracting the sympathy of the majority. Artificial intelligence big techs assists in the collection of data for accommodation to the party program. The diachronic trajectory of theory and practice converges in the silencing of protests, diminishing the passion for social justice and transversal dignity against necropolitics.
Corporate media deconstructs the vectors that distinguish the direction of society, by monitoring the “promises” in each election to readjust them to the system. “Should the city government use public money for ideological events like the World Social Forum?” asks an executive director of the RBS, not including the Freedom Forum promoted by the Institute of Business Studies (IEE). The message is clear; the messenger is cunning. The fifth-grade stratagem determines the response. The left’s project is banned, and the right’s is praised. The “ethics of responsibility” (fiscal) is enough for the authorities. The “ethics of conviction” (in ideals) is useless, outdated. There is no alternative.
The hegemony of money distorts political activity; it separates it from humanism. The Diplomatic World denounces the “single thought” propagated by neoliberalism. The shift of social democracy to the North navigates the Washington Consensus, increases growing frustration and exports resentment to the South, with the fall in income of the middle class and workers. With this, love retreats to the wings and hate rises to the stage of globalization, presented as a panacea.
The technical and a-ideological appearance of the deliberations demonstrates the Sebastianist zeal to purify the laissez-faire and expel egalitarianism. The pragmatic saga provides oxygen to the misery of politics to spread the virus that reproduces civilizational setbacks to the four winds. Demagogues hide the return to primitive accumulation. If Napoleon Bonaparte could rename the “Place de la Revolución” as “Place de la Concorde”, the site of the guillotine in Paris; then capital can defraud the founding values of modernity to highlight contemporary antinomies. Namely, personal progress at the expense of the collective, and individual freedom at the expense of the common good.
The principle of hope
Positivism does not capture the methodological specificity of social science in relation to the natural sciences: (a) The historical character of social phenomena, susceptible to change by human intervention; (b) The partial identity between the subject and the object of knowledge, which cannot be ignored; (c) the fact that social problems give rise to antagonistic conceptions in social classes and; (d) The implications of theory for clarifying the truth and its transformative consequences on the establishment. None of this can be analyzed under the microscope of a biology laboratory, or detected through the orthodox lens of monetarism that deludes the form of the economy, with a classist content.
As Michael Löwy points out in Dialectical method and political theory: “The worldviews of social classes condition the final stage of social scientific research, the interpretation of facts, the formulation of theories, but also the choice of the object of study, the definition of what is essential and what is accessory, the questions we pose to reality and the very problem of research”. Barbarism tries to erase the traces of class in the irrationality of the “cultural war”, the “non-partisan school” and the “gender ideology”. Civil disobedience, on the other hand, looks up and challenges its equals.
The de-ideologization of ideologies and the depoliticization of politics allows the pact of recherches with the mechanisms of domination and, furthermore, the preaching of faith in socialism. The derision of prophetic imagination to indicate paths leads to disenchantment. Instead of questioning the systemic web, many prefer to describe its functionality. The dialectic of totality is shattered into disconnected pieces. The rationalization of order consecrates conformism. Rebellion takes refuge in bars. “In the mirror / at a glance / the color of the dream / of yesterday”, distills a haiku by Paulo Leminski.
The low rates of unionization and anti-capitalist militancy are signs of the decline of ideologies and politics, in the face of deindustrialization and the advance of the tertiary sector (commerce and service provision). They are symptoms of the collapse of democracy and the dawn of regimes of exception; the increase in inequality and the era of depression; the precariousness of work and super-exploitation. The soil is fertile for the sowing of horror. Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, Javier Milei and the coach of the chair are dark creatures from the sewer of neoliberal individualism. The institutionalization of conflicts has failed. The lights have gone out. It's dark and no one sings. The party is over. What now?
The path to transformation today shifts from focusing on ownership of the means of production to public management by the State at all levels of government. To recover the notion of class struggle, it is urgent to awaken the ideology latent in the popular sphere, citizen participation. Appealing to the manifest ideology of the classics does not replace real experiences. Social participation is the symbol of a successful experience of governance, and is the organizational link for the emancipation of the people.
The challenge lies in overcoming empiricist epistemology to transcend real consciousness and develop a possible consciousness. The “principle of hope” carries the energy needed to overcome paralysis. Only in this way can the feeling of the morning defeat the apoliticalism that hangs – gloomily – over our time.
* Luiz Marques is a professor of political science at UFRGS. He was Rio Grande do Sul's state secretary of culture in the Olívio Dutra government.
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