A twelve years ago, Polish sociologist Jan Sowa published an article entitled By breaking the code. Media and neoliberal consensus. I fishy that fewer people associate this text – it is simply a technological publication, part of a larger collection. But I go back to him regularly due to the fact that I'm discussing him with another year of my students.
The Owl's text is simply a brief summary of the problems faced by private media in the time of neoliberalism. They are dependent on the preferences of the audience, and this prompts them to focus on sensational content, even those of small importance from a social interest point of view. Worse still, they became active in business relations – with advertisers and their rich owners. All of this leads to various types of pathology.
The Owl gives an example of the paper “New York regular News”, which resigned from the publication of a negative article on the telephone company Bell Atlantic. Reason? The company was 1 of the paper advertisers.
Polish sociologist nevertheless tries to be optimistic. It notes that the net is an excellent field for the improvement of independent media, due to the fact that it is comparatively inexpensive to scope many audiences through it. It is possible, therefore, that this kind of media will begin to dispel conventional moles which lose all year to credibility.
From the rain to the gutter
Every time I read the Owl lyrics, 2 things hit me. Firstly, how current is his diagnosis of the problems of private media. Secondly, how outdated is the imagination of the net as a place to defy the top pathologies of the conventional media market.
Private media are inactive active in business relations and this continues to negatively affect their activities. To follow the fresh example, Jeff Bezos He's banned "Washington Post" editors published the text with support for Kamala Harris. I leave out the question of whether editorials should support anyone in the presidential race at all. The thing is that the decision should not be made by the authoritarian owner of a billionaire. Especially erstwhile his company, Blue Origin, was talking to counter-candidate Harris.
The owl besides rightly felt that the net would challenge conventional media. In fact, all media giants years ago got into bigger or smaller trouble. Their ratings are falling and the number of readers is falling, their influences are falling, their public assurance is falling.
Only the top winners of these changes did not turn out to be independent media from the imagination of the Owl. No, they were utilized by digital giants: Meta (owner of Facebook and Instagram), Alphabet (owner of Google), X Elona Muska or ByteDance (owner of TikTok). alternatively of very large media under the control of a bunch of rich people... we got even bigger media under even more strict control of rich people.
Developments in the media sector reflect a wider trend.
Over the last 20 years, many elements of the strategy have weakened, which the left has long criticised. However, people, institutions and movements that are just as bad and even worse in any ways than their predecessors entered this gap.
The planet of X and Facebook is no better than the planet of CNN and the "New York Times"; the planet of Trump and Orbán is no better than the planet of Clinton and Blair, and the planet of brexit elites is no better than the planet of technocratic elites utilizing EU structures to impose pro-business solutions.
The left hasn't thought about it yet. And it should do so, or else it could make a mistake for the Liberals after the 2007–08 financial crisis: attach to an outdated set of political challenges.
The left utilized to criticize the system. Right! However, it is time to ask how to deal with those who, on the dissolution of certain elements of this system, are utilizing it to further strengthen their already considerable power.
Be like Trump?
I know any people have an answer for that. Well, the left should simply replace the false antisystemicity of the Plutocrats like Trump and Muska with its actual antisystemicity, due to the fact that seemingly there is simply a social request for people beating absolutely into elites.
That's easier said than done.
Some people on the left look jealously at the successes of the alleged populist right - people specified as Trump, Orbán or in Poland Jarosław Kaczyński. They think the left could do the same. It is adequate that it would become little academic and over-intellectual, little elite, little busy with cultural issues, and more focused on the life and problems of the working class.
Supporters of this approach usually see themselves as conventional left-wingers – focused on issues of material existence. However, specified analyses themselves are highly intangible due to the fact that they omit a fewer details. Like, Trump had the support of the richest man in the world, the largest tv station in the United States and 1 of the most powerful organization machines.
Let us take the hazard that money and communication infrastructure are crucial in politics. This leads to an uncomfortable question: who, in particular, on the left, could take Trump's path?
Let's imagine Bernie Sanders getting into a fierce fight against the elite. It separates itself unambiguously from the elites of both parties, pushes on cultural issues and mostly drives on the band with rhetoric, at subsequent electoral rallies listing – like Trump – the name of the individual to be dealt with after reaching power.
Which billionaire would support Sanders, like Musk did Trump? Not only with powerful contributions to a organization account, but besides transforming 1 of the largest social networking sites into a promotional device of its candidate? Would a large tv network support Sanders, just like Fox News supported Trump? Would the Democratic organization yet stand up for Sanders equally in line, as the Republican organization stood up for Trump, supporting him in even the craziest actions, like questioning the 2020 election outcome?
All these questions are rhetorical, of course. It is known that the answer is simply a large “no”. For this, if Sanders had denied all minorities, if he had kept quiet about these uncomfortable ‘cultural’ issues, he would have lost at least half of his colleagues and volunteers for whom these are crucial things and who have just come to fight for them.
It may be worth admitting, however, that under conditions of neoliberal capitalism, making populism the eventual intent of which is to strengthen the power of the oligarchs, is much easier than doing specified populism, whose eventual intent is to violate the interests of these rich people?
Really?
The United States is the most striking example, due to the fact that its policy is An utmost dependence on money paid by private donors. But I don't think things are going anywhere else diametrically different.
So we're back to our first dilemma. How is the left in a planet where not only the strategy but besides anti-system policy is under the control of the elite?
To begin with, it would be good not to fall for the rhetoric of oligarchical “anti-elitarians”. Unfortunately, it's evidently not that obvious.
Some time ago Cenk Uygur, co-founder of the left-wing service The Young Turks, entered the interaction With Musk on platform X. Uygur proposed that the government's productivity department, headed by Musk, should be curious in Pentagon spending. In response, Musk expressed a general interest in the subject. Which led Uygura to interesting conclusions:
"I asked @elonmusk to entrust me with the task of cutting the Pentagon budget. And he said, "What are your suggestions?" I run the largest left-wing online network and no Democratic organization leader has always asked me [...] Which page seems more open and inclusive? Which side seems more hospitable, and who tries to push you distant if you disagree with orthodoxy a small bit? Which side asks for suggestions and which 1 demands submission and obedience?”
Really?
Falling into childish delight due to the fact that The richest man in the world He wrote us a fewer words on the social platform, that's the last thing the left needs. Especially erstwhile this delight leads to talking nonsense about the openness of the Republican organization and Musk. We're talking about an organization that has mutilated from its ranks anyone who hasn't bent his knee before Trump (including the Republican leader in Congress, daughter of erstwhile Vice President), and the man who boasts that erstwhile his employees request better conditions, he fires them.
Changing Game Rules
At the level of communication, the substance seems clear – not to fall on the alleged anti-systemism of the populist right. Do not delude yourself that you can dismantle the incorrect strategy with it and build a better one.
Because erstwhile people like Trump talk about disassembling the system, it's more likely they want to blow up common vaccination programs or privatising mail not to fight inequality and class divisions. Should it be added that Musk has no intention of improving the surviving conditions of the poor?
But rhetoric is the easy part. As I wrote, it is naive to believe that decently selected messages will in themselves win in politics.
Perhaps it is worth going back to Erik Olin Wright, an American Marxist sociologist. erstwhile he wondered how we could go beyond capitalism, he stated that 1 way was to gradually grow those areas of society that are already going beyond the logic of capital. This is not just about the old social democratic tactics of humanizing capitalism by introducing social programmes and public services. Expanding gaps in the capitalist strategy is besides changing it from within in specified a way as to facilitate the organisation of anti-system opposition without hazard of being taken over by oligarchs like Muska.
The beginnings of the labour movement give good guidance. erstwhile workers declared a strike at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, their main request was frequently not to increase wages, pay sick leave or improve security. No: the main request was to agree to establish trade unions and to recognise the legal validity of these unions. The workers knew that if they changed the playing field in specified a way that abruptly there would be a new, large player – unions – it would be easier for them to implement postulates improving working conditions.
Each, even the smallest improvement to increase the legal strength of trade unions, reducing the legal capacity of billionaires to interfere in the electoral process, breaking up media monopolies, facilitating participation in politics by people of the working class – is simply a step towards a society where opportunities will become even more equal.
Such an approach will surely be met with akin criticism as the conventional reformist approach of social democracy – that it is just powdering a fundamentally bad system.
But if individual truly wants to put up with this system, they gotta face the problem that under current capitalist conditions any effort to overthrow it will be immediately intercepted by people like Musk. Or – what is already happening – will end in terrorism charges.
Trying to change the rules of the game from within the strategy is not going to a rotten compromise and abandon the ambition of a deeper change, but a prerequisite for specified a change.
