Michel Bauwens on the Woke State as a Roadblock for the Commons Transition

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Discussion

Michel Bauwens

A political-strategic editorial, November 2021: The Woke State as a roadblock for the commons transition


Everybody is by now familiar with the notion of woke capitalism, and there are a number of books documenting the shift of large corporations and philanthropic organization towards supporting the woke ideology, i.e. the race-conscious (and other forms of biological markers) group-based allocation of resources, the essentializing of race as an official ideology, segregated group organization as the basis of organizational and institutional life,, etc…

I don’t think it is exaggerated to say that at least in the anglo-saxon countries there has been a significant shift towards the woke-ization of companies and other elite institutions. The shift has been well documented as ‘already taken place’, and not something that is expected in the future.

But significantly under-reported and not yet named is the evolution towards a ‘woke state’ form, which is also very significantly advancing at least in the anglo-saxon countries. In fact, after Trudeau in Canada, Biden is probably the most consistent pro-woke government. Their very first week in office was a festival of identitarian measures, with clear discriminatory intent, some of these measures already invalidated by the courts.


What does a woke state mean in practice ?

Here are a few elements to look at:

  • A shift from the idea of equal citizenship and inclusive diversity policies, towards biology-conscious, race-conscious and exclusive-diversity group allocation (Biden’s Covid relief, vaccine prioritization in Vermont, etc …); i.e. ‘dominant’-deemed groups are systematically targeted in terms of diminishing the resources available to them
  • Introducing and generalizing race and other essentialisms in public education, including segregated meetings, etc …; uni-dimensional teaching of history, etc.. ; hostility and cancellation to any practice that generates unequal outcomes and the levelling downwards of any requirements
  • Making equal outcome the guiding principle of selection within the public sector, and thereby overtly or covertly trying to overcome the limitation of the Civil Rights Act


This transition from an egalitarian ethos to a hierarchy- and discrimination-based ethos based on privileged group membership is a huge shift for western culture, and is distinct from both the liberal ‘equality of opportunity’ regime (which was largely fictitious but ideologically powerful) and the social-democratic ‘equality of access to infrastructure for development’ regime that has been dominant in continental Europe. My hypothesis is that the existence of that second ethos is what has been a relative protection in Europe so far.

The woke state is ultimately also a deep change in the class structure of the capitalist state. Until the advent of neoliberalism, the main alliance undergirding the state was that between national capital and the leaders of the social democratic labor movement; after 1968/1973/1989, it was replaced by a neoliberal regime, which was an alliance between transnationalized capital and the leaders of the identity-based cultural rights movements, but with a significant maintenance of the labor-based social compromise.

I believe this alliance broke down with the crisis of neoliberalism which started with the financial meltdown in 2008. The crisis in the US particularly affected minority groups, and the cognitive elites within them.

Faced with the Occupy challenge of 2011 , an extremely dangerous narrative for hegemony as it pitted the 99% against the 1%; a new alliance was forged between the 1% and the leaders of cultural and minority groups (the 20%, i.e. the ideological cartels of the cognitive urban middle classes, the PMC, professional and middle classes) based on the promise of guaranteed group allocation and access to resources, a re-arrangement of the spoils within the top layers of distribution pyramid. This is based on a radicalization of identity from an integrative vision to a segregated vision, and a reversal of social hierarchies whereby it is no longer sufficient to broaden the norms towards inclusivity, but to abolish the norm and replace it with a counternorm. The supposed above will be the below, and the supposed below with be the new above.

Many if not most progressive forces in western society have shifted in degrees to this new positioning, which is paradoxically leading to their progressive electoral weakening, and to an identitarian backlash in which the majority working populations are shifting their allegiances to the populist right. As explained by Vivek Chibber of Catalyst magazine (the theory magazine attached to Jacobin), woke policies are an effective blackmail against real progressive policies. Whenever the populist left gets more popular, minority and race card arguments effectively undermine it (this is what happened to Sanders in the Georgia primary, while the antisemitism charge was used to undermine Corbyn). This represents a strategic difficulty for the left, from which it may not recover. With the avenue of class radicalization effectively closed, and social-democratic promises ineffective in a period of crisis, the only option may well be a further self-defeating wokeization of what remains of the left.

The populist right represents an alliance between the factions of capital that are the most territorially bounded, with the equally bounded rural and working classes (the ‘somewhere’s rather than the nowheres), i.e. those willing to sacrifice Empire to the Nation; while the woke coalitions are willing to sacrifice the Nation to Empire.

Having reached peak globalization and peak migration after the crisis of 2008, the anglo-saxon populist right is economically right-libertarian, and lacks credible social policies, which undermines their long-term support; while the continental populist right may a stronger solidaristic ideology, which seems to create a measure of stability in the countries they control, such as Poland and Hungary.

Paradoxically, the egalitarian ethos of the nation-state is now more inclusive in its principles and effects than the hierarchizing effects of the woke ideology, which explains the attraction of sovereignist movements for the working poor.

A number of progressive players, such as the Danish Social-Democrats, the Austrian Greens, are a joker in this new positioning, as they are returning to the earlier progressive tradition before neoliberal hegemony (in their positions against the unregulated flows of capital and people).

While the consolidation of the woke state seems inevitable, it is also equivalent to a civilizational auto-immune disease (very similar to how the Christians initially destroyed the cohesion of the Roman Empire), and it is hard to envision a long term viability of such a strategy of universal fragmentation, since it is targeted against the working poor of both majority and minority groups. It seems a short term marriage of convenience, not the basis for a viable cilizational model. It is hard to see any other outcome than civil war as it logics unfold. (I cannot see how an alliance of the 1% and the 20% can be an offset against an angry 70%)

All of this presents a difficult conundrum for any wished for commons-based transition policies. Historically, the red-green coalitions that were the most favourable political context for such policies, but they are fatally weakened by their drift towards woke policies, or at least, by the blackmail exerted by identitarian forces; but the right-populist movements, in their large majorities, do not have redistributive and ecological commons protecting orientations.

Needless to say, identitarian hierarchisation and group allocation is incompatible with actual commons development, but that makes the commons a unique defense for defending civil society against the woke state. What is at stake is the linkage with supportive political orientations. It is the latter alignment which has now been problematized by the growth of segregationist identitarianism and the support they receive from woke capital and the mobilization of the resources of the emerging woke state form.