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Here is the second of the quarterly check-ins for 2025 on what the signals are saying regarding After Capitalism. (See Q1 2025 here.) Drum roll please!
Hyper-individualistic and Focused on Worth, the Manosphere Is a Product of Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism encourages us to see ourselves as isolated individuals, responsible for our own success or failure. Among many other things research has shown that one of its outcomes is a profound loneliness. This is something that the manosphere exploits.
AH Comment: While the hyperindividualism may be more prominent in the manosphere, it is everywhere! Asking for help is practically seen as weak or wrong. Rather, we are nudged to buy the service from someone else. There is no sense of reciprocity or altruism. It’s all economic transactions.
The Left Needs a New Globalization Vision to Counter the Far-Right Surge
The left is in shambles everywhere while hard-right and far-right parties are riding high in polls across the world. The way out of neoliberal globalization is by developing a new globalization that is democratic and free from the destructive tendencies of capitalist accumulation.
AH comment: One of our seven key drivers of After Capitalism is “the ineffective left,” which in particular noted the tendency to focus on small-scale folk politics with a suspicion of global approaches. The lack of appealing view on the Left opens the door for increasingly bizarre views on the right (see Review: Bronze Age Mindset). Of course, this is the key motivation for the Imagining After Capitalism guiding images.
Schwarzenegger Tells Environmentalists Dismayed by Trump to ‘Stop Whining’ and Get to Work
“I know that the people are sick and tired of the whining and the complaining and the doom and gloom,” Schwarzenegger said. “The only way we win the people’s hearts and minds is by showing them action that makes their lives better.”
AH comment: No doubt there are reasons to despair. We talked about finding “Hope in the Fark” with Rebecca Solnit and embracing the general resistance to change as the #1 Rule of Foresight. We joke that we need to set aside time to “cry it out” and then get back to work. Now is the time! We need to create a more appealing images of the future and build the pathways! There is a lot of work to do. — Andy Hines
i agree the “left” needs a vision. of course, i’d like to know how you define “left”…
assuming the “left” can create a vision, and it is somehow aligned with the thinking of marx, it seems to me the “left” need to admit that human nature doesn’t include a willingness to make significant personal sacrifices for the benefit of complete strangers…
the “oppressed v oppressor” theme pushed by most in the “left” falls apart when a person that feels “oppressed” is re-categorized into the “oppressor” class… and when i look at history what i see is that the “left” is always able to find someone that has less than someone else, and it is almost always attributed to “oppression” that can only be remediated via the force of law – aka more government intervention… another law, another regulatory agency, more rules, more taxes…
what i’m looking for in “after capitalism” is a mechanism that allows an individual to accomplish as much as they desire (including accumulating as much “wealth” as they can legally accomplish because that is the foundation of “individual liberty” in modern societies – nobody with any sense wants to go back to an agrarian economy…).