Such a provocative diagnosis of the Polish left, especially the "young left", is the basic conclusion that can be drawn from the book by David Kujawa "In accordance with the laws of geometry. How the Left stopped worrying and loved the logic of the goods”, which had late appeared.
The title of the book refers to a fragment of the poem cited by the author. In this part the head is dominated by the laws of geometry, meaning its rationalization, machination, algorithmization. This serves to control the intellectual interior of man, which becomes a fresh area of capitalist conquest. Not the earth and its resources, not even the body, but the most private and inaccessible, including the attention that we seem to manage ourselves. The intellectual interior can be cut in the name of the laws of geometry, in order to effectively manage them in a consumer purpose, to buy all that was received, including the values that, in the name of expected progress, which is indeed a regression, had to be renounced as limiting self. In this sense, the subjectivity of fresh capitalism resembles the beginning of W. Gombrowicz's "Diaries". I above all else, I above all cultural norms, increasingly sealed, as Kujawa defines it, and even liquidated in the name of the goal, which is the perfect of a perfectly idiosyncratic culture.
The task “culture without symbols”, described by Jerzy Kmita, is being implemented in front of our eyes. Calculating and quantifying the intellectual interior serves to better realize the needs to turn everything into a commodity, including our subjectivity. The entity itself, and all its actions, must be calculated, due to the fact that otherwise it escapes the reign of techno-consumption, the hegemony of algorithmic culture. What is not numerical is eluded by capitalism, which is why Kujawa is sympathetically looking towards romanticist anticapitalism as intended to pull us out of the hell of capitalism, due to the fact that the madness of non-understanding is impossible to grasp and codify.
In turn, the subtitle of the book points to the seduction of the “young left”, as Kujawa describes it, by a capitalist formation. That is, by what the left should act against, but as a bitten and poisoned culture of individualism (greatly described by M. Jacino), she focused so heavy on her lifestyle that she successfully forgot about past values, specified as social solidarity or dedication to her own pleasance and comfort in the name of supporting the weaker economically and symbolically. But not only to cultivate its fragile but full of virtue I am here, but besides to have a "neoliberal cultural policy", which, as Kujawa writes, "[...] cynically uses left-wing emancipation rhetoric to maximize profits, despite the social consequences."
In a word, the left fell for it, making out of superstructure, i.e. world-view affairs, its divine message, not realizing that it is inactive the basis for superstructure. Its progressive and noble emancipation program was in fact guided by the logic of identity-cultural division so that alliances in the conflict for common interest would vanish from sight. Thus, the methodological directive could be worded, where there are world-identical antagonisms, look for the hidden function of the capitalist mechanism, due to the fact that with large probability there is not a unitary pathology at their base – from Islamophobia to toxic masculinity – but economics.
A good example in this marketing position is, in fact, the thought of increasingly changing generations, which not only willingly buy the signs of their identity, express values (this is simply a inexpensive strategy for absolution of consumption), but are besides opposed to another generations – of course, these "yearbooks yesterday". Multiply and multiply identities in the name of a fetish of authenticity – here are the prescriptions fused by capitalism.
The relation of the left with capitalism, her love of commodity logic, is the main line of the Kuyawa speech, which, in various views, this blind love exposes and criticizes. All that is regarded as moral virtue and expanding the freedom from capital oppression is dictated by the power of capital to mention only sex-working or mindfulness. Freight logic makes everything a contract and business: from consenting to sex to home service. This leftistness is simply a product of capitalism. Moreover, her absolute deficiency of perniciousness stems from this – the rebellion proved to be a revolt for sale to appeal to the beginning of the book Kujawy (and at the same time the title of the book by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, which unfortunately he does not mention).
So it turns out, Kujawa claims that the young left hatred capitalism, love it, is identity and financially dependent on it. This is simply a very toxic compound where immediate therapy is needed, due to the fact that the diagnosis presented by Kujawa is correct. It may be worse to admit by the young left that she needs specified therapy. But “Terrapia is no shame”, not to mention that everyone erstwhile fell for something he thought would be good, it was not necessarily such.
Why did the “young left” love commodity logic?
The answer to the author is simply a “left” lifestyle.
The Internet, in peculiar social media, is an component of technological-media infrastructure that would most likely not be in specified a form and scale. Shoshana Zuboff, recalled by Kujawa, perfectly described the “behavioral surplus” that we generated traces on the net that service techno-feudals to monitor and plan our thoughts and actions. In this sense, the "capitalism of platforms" must force us to spend as much time online as possible, due to the fact that then the surplus will be the largest and so the profit will grow. For this reason, these media are designed to make their audiences doominally dependent, to make them involved.
There is no request to be a communication and media specialist to know that different forms of media will otherwise manage the content and its reception, especially erstwhile it comes to interactiveness, anonymity and emotions and antagonism. Social media, which has increased and accelerated certain social practices, e.g. ostracism, are able to gather very rapidly a group of people who are morally outraged, who were not a group before and were not intending to protest something. Digital swarms (byung-Chul Han's concept) will rapidly attack a victim who has already been found guilty. There is simply a crime, there must be punishment – and it must be immediate, due to the fact that postponed in time will be little emotional, and most likely little harsh, and it will be imposed by the court, not by me. This digital form of punishment is pre-modern, due to the fact that fact is not the most crucial here – it is crucial to execute your imagination of the world.
This is how “communication capitalism” works, which, and this is crucial in Kujawa's reflections, gives those addicted to the “dopaminal loops” a sense of political permanence in their conflict for a better world. Of course, this act is illusory, and the fight comes down to “narcissistic self-stimulation”. Pasted to the screen, the “young left” does not do anything another than support capitalism, although it seems to her that it is increasingly inclusive and empathic (one and the another attitude is more self-imaginative than a real attitude) that it is an avant-garde of humanity: cognitive and moral. Fighting, as she thinks, for a better world, truly stimulates a pleasance center in her own brain.
If so, the capitalist takeover of the entity proved to be unexpectedly successful, as it leads to the presentation of itself as a luminary of virtue and progress. Kujawa writes: “We should not be amazed erstwhile the fascist’s favourite activities of left-wing youth became exposed. Accusing individual of misgendering, paper feminism, crypto-authoritarianism, and all kinds of micro-aggressions, 1 motion is different from the 1 we attack and we publically state that we are better people. There is nothing altruistic about this kind of behavior, due to the fact that we get immediate gratification for it, sometimes even double. The attention paid to us by the viper's nest effectively fills emotional deficiencies, and in addition to attention we accumulate social capital." In another words, as Han writes: “Neoliberalism uses morality on many levels. Moral values service as signs of social distinction. They can be added to your same profile to increase self-esteem and even more: to build a narcissistic self-image. The value mention is so not the community, but the self.’
The left-wing youths are luminaries of virtue and advancement to usage the title as a completely overly silent, due to the fact that the uncomfortable book Catherine Liu. specified an approach causes solidarity to be broken and a moral feature is sought in everyone, which cannot be fixed or forgiven. Here there are no Christian principles of mercy, forgiveness, regret and repentance, or even "acquired punishment." "The net pseudoradicals", as Kujawa describes them, have lost their ability to critique in a civilized way (even in their group), without excommunication. This attitude is not an invitation to brotherhood. The left simply loves only the perfect people, and, first of all, they find them nowhere (because they are not), secondly, the same is not what I think he is aware of. Hating each other, they hatred others by constantly seeking a scapegoat to attest to their own virtuousness.
Such an attitude, as Kuyawa rightly points out, creates a fear of exclusion, which is possible for the slightest offense. It is simply a left-wing disciplinary regime, analogous to those described by Michel Foucault, with the subject being at the same time a defender and prisoner – others and himself. In the long run, it is impossible to function like this, due to the fact that it is highly exhausting, resulting from constant control and inability to be yourself. For this reason, the left-wing identity departure, consisting not only of its continuous multiplication, multiplication and hybridization into increasingly ridiculous and bizarre constellations (utopia-cosmic visions of luxury-queer communism), but besides of discipline, has already reached apogee and is slow rejected. Even left-wing heroes are tired.
Of course, it's not about not knowing what's right or wrong. However, 1 needs to be aware of its own unfailing anthropological assumptions, i.e. that people are only human – neither angels nor devils. The Left introduces a government of correctness and perfection in an area another than the body – in the sphere of morality.
This detached social lifestyle, tightly closed to those who did not pass the left-wing circles of insight and did not master the therapeutic and progressive language, makes the social reality and attitudes of another people little understood. This lifestyle makes, and on its own request, that, for example, academic left-wing youth is increasingly alienated, as they deal with unusual and marginal issues sometimes, that they do not even interest colleagues from the institute or faculty. It even reads well, it's fun, classy (and acidic) fun for itself, but completely without social significance, which deepens only the alienation of cognition produced at the university for public money.
The deficiency of a broader and in-depth analysis of social reality, especially through ‘a stay in the field’, just like for example Arlie R. Hochschild, makes labels, yellow adhesives, including ‘fascist’. Kujawa is right erstwhile he writes that the digital left constantly teaches on the issue of e.g. class interest, being absolutely disconnected from it. In this context, he writes that "Every time we repeat that the working class votes against its own interests, due to the fact that the anti-tax rhetoric of Sławomir Mentzen and his libertarian fellows from the Confederacy was seduced, we make it clear that we ourselves do not realize absolutely anything from the dynamics of modern social processes." Kujawa correctly notes that specified voters no longer believe in the state (it is hard to wonder) and do not have the slightest desire to postpone their lives, so it is calculated in the short run alternatively than in the long run. Gratification has nothing to postpone, let alone that it is not known whether it will be "later" at all. It is simply a cancellation of the future in the broad sense of the word, which we are subject to in rule all as entities formed by the culture of capitalism.
Furthermore, only from the position of a comparatively prosperous life can 1 think of the future condition of the state of prosperity. Today, many people are afraid about everyday life. In the end, they do what we all do, including the left: we play each another due to the fact that without religion in the future it is rational behavior. Confederate voters are at least honest in this, as opposed to the “left” youth who is polarly distant from sacrificing anything for the sake of “this country”. So what is needed is the values that are rightly called upon by Kujawa, and more specifically, what he does not specify, specified a set of values that are not only aimed at “here and now”, but give hope, and frequently a real interest, that sacrifice will pay off, that there is something more crucial than a pleasant life apart from a peculiar place. This approach provides tradition and ritual, not ridicule. If not her, what in return? Therapy culture.
This is the first political consequence of the left-wing lifestyle: the deficiency of knowing of people, resulting, among others, from the deficiency of social contact with them and from the ignorance of the realities of their lives.
The second is an absolute ban on building a political alliance with anyone else in the worldview. In this context, Kujawa describes the case of Paulina Matysiak of the organization Together, who was suspended for his cooperation with associate of Law and Justice Marcin Horala, forming an association with him So for improvement concerning improvement projects, specified as CPK. It turned out that even for the sake of social interest, it was impossible to cooperate with the enemy and so to argue “German neoliberalism”. This only shows that the left, in the end, is fraternizing with neoliberal forces, and the question of the destructive tissue of social capitalism is not a precedence for them. As Rafał Woś aptly notes in the review of the book Kujawa, the inability to build alliances is the consequence of treating as an enemy of individual who is an ally in the sphere of "base" (social questions) due to the fact that it is not very progressive in the area of superstructure. This shows that superstructure is most crucial to the left. Nor did she realize that her moral superiority would make her number a minority. The present left, inducing its moral superiority, made it incapable to do what the left could a decade ago: go side by side with the workers. The luminaries of virtue and advancement were alone.
Importantly, Kujawa correctly notes that ‘online pseudoradicals’ force certain actions on the parties, including the expulsion from Matysiak club, which is explicitly considered a fascist. It is specified a left-wing variant of right-wing shuria, due to the fact that on the magic rule of contact, if individual cooperates with Horal or Mateusz Morawiecki, he becomes like them, and so is simply a fascist. It is besides worth adding that Matysiak was disciplined for the words spoken during the discussion panel 2 Left Hands, that most people spend more time accounting for electricity than pronouns. It shows how the left is offended by reality, due to the fact that it just is. Focusing on specified issues blocks the anticipation of building alliances. Nothing is as conducive to capitalism as disassembling over-the-world alliances and shifting the boundary of cooperation to an inch apart.
In this shot, I read the meaning of the book Kujawa anyway, it is an invitation, I will usage here the language that I dislike, to the therapeutic realization by the “young left” of this pathological situation and to find a way out of it. The fact that the left must find an idea, build anew, and again, its identity communicative (has a good tradition in this area), if it does not want to become a neo-liberal addition or go underground, is, I hope, clear to many of them. Unless they like to fantasize about their private utopias, which examples can be observed on a regular basis in subsequent episodes of their digital life on the screen (it's a boring show).
The love of capitalism is always toxic, and it is not worth being in a violent relationship. The fear of exclusion and self-exclusivity must be worked. Will therapy succeed? I uncertainty it, though I want I was wrong.
Dr hab. Michał Rydlewski
Graphics in the text header: Rosy / Bad Homburg / Germany from Pixabay
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