About the New EcoLogics blog
From 2007 to 2010, this blog published articles concerned with what I described as the nocturnal connections between neoliberalism and the political cultures of the UK and the US. I spoke of ‘nocturnal’ connections because, at the time, at least the corporate media representations of our political cultures were in a state of denial about the links between ostensibly ‘free market’ economics and politics, ‘free market’ economics and corruption.
Many of the corporate media continue to be in a state of denial, but by mid-2011, the links between the free market policies and economic, political and moral corruption are so explicit that they cannot be plausibly denied. To continue using the earlier metaphor, they are now entirely ‘diurnal’. In England, for example, it is no longer possible for the Liberal Conservative coalition to deny that it has taken the steps to put an end to the policy of equal and open access to higher education. It is also increasingly evident that a primary motivation for this change is not the financial crisis (how to justify a billion dollar war in Libya, if that’s the case?), but the pressure of private investors. In the US, the failure to close Guantánamo, and now the summary execution of Bin Laden make it plain that the ideal of the rule of law, at least as it had been represented and/or observed until the end of the 20th century, no longer applies. I focus on the US and the UK, the leading nations in the neoliberal ‘revolution’, but of course similar points might be made about Berlusconi’s Italy, Merkel’s Germany, Sarkozy’s France, and what will almost certainly be Rajoy’s Spain.
In these and many other contexts, it is as clear as daylight that what is often described as ‘the West’ is no longer the kind of democratic space that it once was. That is not to say that democracy, and a certain separation of powers associated with it, has come completely to an end. In the US and in the UK, as in Italy, France, Spain and Germany, we are nowhere near the kind of stereotypical authoritarian state associated with naked dictatorship. But equally, we cannot pretend that we enjoy the kind of freedom of speech, let alone the egalitarian, or demi-egalitarian policy structures that predominated during the postwar period. Nor can we deny that what is in place now is a plutocracy – also known as a ‘plutonomy’, i.e. government for, and by, the very richest 1% of the population. The ideological bubble has, in this sense, well and truly burst, and so now it seems pointless to write posts that critique what is becoming increasingly obvious to one and all.
And yet… a second reason for a change in the substance and style of this blog is found in my sense that, despite the transformation I have just described, despite the looming environmental catastrophe, despite a future that seems increasingly like something out of the darkest science fiction, many ‘progressive’ and ‘liberal’ people still live their lives in ways that reproduce aspects of the neoliberal ideology. I speak of other people, but the same is true of my own life. Our lives are riven by a huge contradiction between a bona fide willingness to find a different way forward, and an inability to see past, or at any rate act past the social and cultural formations that have long served to legitimise the claims of the free privateers.
Such a contradiction points to the huge importance of the most implicit practices of everyday life, and with them, the role of common sense. It seems increasingly clear to me that, whatever macro political structures may be holding up the nakedly corrupt status quo in political circles (Politics with a capital P), it’s everyday practice that is holding the current form of society together, and this almost regardless of what the politicians do or don’t do. So long as this dimension, if we can call it that, is not interrogated, elucidated, and more generally engaged in a meaningful manner, then it seems clear that nothing is going to change in England, and in other countries where democracy is gradually (and in some cases, not so gradually) being eroded.
Given this perspective, I would like to use this blog to focus from now onwards on analysing a variety of forms of common sense, a variety of formations of everyday life. As part of this change, readers familiar with the older posts will notice that the new EcoLogics posts will be considerably shorter (usually no more than about 1000 words), and will appear regularly. If all goes to plan, I hope to publish one post each month, on or soon after the first day of the month.
The first full post will appear on July 1. In the meantime, I will be working to republish a selection of ‘old’ EcoLogics posts, many of which will be accompanied by brief contextualising introductions.
Thanks in advance for your interest.
EcoLogics
