Ask Antonio (Almost) Anything

[Antonio the Sixth]

So, with Jante's Law being dead and buried, I guess it's time for me give up the pretense of not enjoying talking about myself. So I'm gonna give it a stab and have my own AMA.

I'm putting in the IP board because I'd like to follow Nathan's lead and make it mostly about my academic interests. For those who don't know, I'm a second-year Poli Sci PhD student. My subfield is Comparative Politics, and my main interest is in the electoral politics of developed democracies. The research subject I'm (supposedly) working on in the short run is about the realignment of the party systems of Western European countries. I have also done some work on American politics (my Master's Thesis was on turnout inequality in the US). Since this year, I'm also a Teaching Assistant (which implies teaching three 1-hour discussion sections as well as grading the student's work). Finally, I have an amateurish interest in political and moral philosophy, so I'm happy to talk about that as well. Feel free to ask about other stuff if you really want to.

(And no, this is not an April Fool. I'll point out it was still March 31 when I made the thread.)

[heatcharger]

Do you plan on finding employment in the US after the completion of your PhD?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

What region or subject within comppol do you specialize in?

[DavidB.]

Well, this is my area too. Through what "lens" do you view realignment in Western Europe? Which academics in political science and which theories have had the most profound influence on your thinking?

[ApatheticAustrian]

How has studying pol. science changed your political beliefs/priorities/worldview?

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Would you rather make out with the Flame Princess, Princess Bubblegum or the Slime Princess?

[Crumpets]

MFK: Fillon, Macron, Le Pen?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Do you plan on finding employment in the US after the completion of your PhD?

I think I'd like to, if I can. It would make more sense to me than going back to France (especially since my impression is that there are very few job openings in French academia these days). It would definitely depend where in the US, though.

What region or subject within comppol do you specialize in?

Western Europe + North America in terms of region, elections (especially electoral sociology/geography) in terms of subjects. I will have to narrow it down a bit for my dissertation, but I'm not quite there yet.

Well, this is my area too. Through what "lens" do you view realignment in Western Europe? Which academics in political science and which theories have had the most profound influence on your thinking?

The thesis that I've found most convincing is Hanspeter Kriesi's idea that globalization has led to a polarization of European societies between those who benefit from it and those who stand to lose. I like the fact that it keeps voting patterns grounded in a sociological analysis (rather than going full end-of-ideology, voter-as-consumer postmodern) while at the same time acknowledging that different groups can be political allies or enemies under different conditions. The "winners vs losers" (his term) divide is not just the class divide of old flipped around since, for example, farmers and people in former working-class areas now stand on the same side.

I also think there is a lot to make out of the more culture-based theories revolving around the notion of "postmaterialism". Inglehart's original theory was seriously flawed (and even he eventually agreed to revise it), but other scholars, such as Flanagan and your country's own Middendorp, had been pointing out for a while that the emergence of the "New Left" can only be understood along with the concurrent rise of the "New Right", and that, together, those define a new axis of political conflict around cultural issues not related to voters' pocketbooks. The objections I'd make is that a lot of the issues the "New Right" talks about have a lot (or at least are framed as having a lot) to do with voter's pocketbooks. Still, I believe that the globalization thesis and the postmaterialism thesis both have solid arguments on their side, and I'd like to find a way to reconcile the two if that's possible.

[NeverAgain]

Will Alternate US States be returning?

[DavidB.]

The thesis that I've found most convincing is Hanspeter Kriesi's idea that globalization has led to a polarization of European societies between those who benefit from it and those who stand to lose. I like the fact that it keeps voting patterns grounded in a sociological analysis (rather than going full end-of-ideology, voter-as-consumer postmodern) while at the same time acknowledging that different groups can be political allies or enemies under different conditions. The "winners vs losers" (his term) divide is not just the class divide of old flipped around since, for example, farmers and people in former working-class areas now stand on the same side.

I also think there is a lot to make out of the more culture-based theories revolving around the notion of "postmaterialism". Inglehart's original theory was seriously flawed (and even he eventually agreed to revise it), but other scholars, such as Flanagan and your country's own Middendorp, had been pointing out for a while that the emergence of the "New Left" can only be understood along with the concurrent rise of the "New Right", and that, together, those define a new axis of political conflict around cultural issues not related to voters' pocketbooks. The objections I'd make is that a lot of the issues the "New Right" talks about have a lot (or at least are framed as having a lot) to do with voter's pocketbooks. Still, I believe that the globalization thesis and the postmaterialism thesis both have solid arguments on their side, and I'd like to find a way to reconcile the two if that's possible.

This is something I totally agree with, which doesn't surprise me too much, both because this has obviously become a very common approach in our area and because we seem to think in relatively similar ways even if we have very different worldviews and arrive at different conclusions. I think Kriesi's work has been highly valuable and find it to be a shame that some are inclined to dismiss the importance of class as a factor in voting behavior on the basis of his thesis while I think it simply proves we should find a way to reconceptualize what class nowadays means.

At the same time I think that when looking at voting behavior (as opposed to party systems) it is important to look at multiculturalism in Europe not only from a winners vs. losers perspective (which, to put it crudely, is basically the "economic anxiety" approach when it comes to voting behavior for RRWPs) but rather dig into the way various groups in society (not only the white working class) deal with it -- so I agree with you that there is more to this than just a pocketbook approach. Much research on the new right has focused on supply side factors and the functioning of radical right-wing parties within party systems, but in understanding voting behavior for RRWPs more sociological research related to the demand side would be more than welcome.

Lastly I think it is important to avoid the "Europe is a country" pitfall; in my main research project to date I analyzed several Western European party systems and found that there are profound differences when it comes to political competition and the "direction" in which these countries "move". This should not be that surprising a result, but it goes against the current trend (both in polsci and in journalism) of lumping together political developments in Western European countries. This is not related to what you said, but just sharing my thoughts here

Have you read Peter Mair's Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democracy? This is the work that has influenced me most. If you haven't, I'm sure you'll like his approach, which is deeply critical of neoliberalism.

[Antonio the Sixth]

How has studying pol. science changed your political beliefs/priorities/worldview?

I'm honestly not sure. I certainly wouldn't say it's made me more left-wing or more right-wing per se. That said, some classes I took in the past (on social democracy and the welfare state, especially) have definitely helped me a great deal in defining what kind of a leftist I am. I like to think that I've learned which redistributive strategies simply don't work (or worked in the past but won't work anymore because circumstances have changed), and which ones actually might work. Some of the latter being, of course, strategies that VSPs and the mass media think are "pipe dreams", but would in fact be perfectly doable. The work of Gøsta Esping-Andersen, in particular, is what led me to think so highly of social democracy. I've also learned a bit not only about what works in terms of policy, but also about what's possible to sell to the public and how we can ensure that the progress we achieve will last. Finally, I think I have a much firmer grasp now on what neoliberalism actually is, which is something that even many leftists get wrong and leads to many serious mistakes.

I'm far from an expert on any of these accounts, but learning about them even as an amateur has been very helpful to my political development.

Would you rather make out with the Flame Princess, Princess Bubblegum or the Slime Princess?

Does any of them speak in Valley Girl dialect? Otherwise, not interested.

MFK: Fillon, Macron, Le Pen?

Oh Christ, you must really hate me...

I guess marry FBM (he doesn't seem to be the nagging husband type, plus that'd make me financially secure), f**k Panzergirl (straight, could then have another reason to say "I f**k the FN"), kill Fillon (mercy kill at this point tbh).

Will Alternate US States be returning?

I plan to update it with detailed 2016 results eventually, yes! Probably not before this summer, though.

[DC Al Fine]

How has studying pol. science changed your political beliefs/priorities/worldview?

I'm honestly not sure. I certainly wouldn't say it's made me more left-wing or more right-wing per se. That said, some classes I took in the past (on social democracy and the welfare state, especially) have definitely helped me a great deal in defining what kind of a leftist I am. I like to think that I've learned which redistributive strategies simply don't work (or worked in the past but won't work anymore because circumstances have changed), and which ones actually might work. Some of the latter being, of course, strategies that VSPs and the mass media think are "pipe dreams", but would in fact be perfectly doable. The work of Gøsta Esping-Andersen, in particular, is what led me to think so highly of social democracy. I've also learned a bit not only about what works in terms of policy, but also about what's possible to sell to the public and how we can ensure that the progress we achieve will last. Finally, I think I have a much firmer grasp now on what neoliberalism actually is, which is something that even many leftists get wrong and leads to many serious mistakes.

Could you elaborate? Both on what it actually is, and how leftists incorrect definitions lead them astray?

[JA]

How has studying pol. science changed your political beliefs/priorities/worldview?

I'm honestly not sure. I certainly wouldn't say it's made me more left-wing or more right-wing per se. That said, some classes I took in the past (on social democracy and the welfare state, especially) have definitely helped me a great deal in defining what kind of a leftist I am. I like to think that I've learned which redistributive strategies simply don't work (or worked in the past but won't work anymore because circumstances have changed), and which ones actually might work. Some of the latter being, of course, strategies that VSPs and the mass media think are "pipe dreams", but would in fact be perfectly doable. The work of Gøsta Esping-Andersen, in particular, is what led me to think so highly of social democracy. I've also learned a bit not only about what works in terms of policy, but also about what's possible to sell to the public and how we can ensure that the progress we achieve will last. Finally, I think I have a much firmer grasp now on what neoliberalism actually is, which is something that even many leftists get wrong and leads to many serious mistakes.

Could you elaborate? Both on what it actually is, and how leftists incorrect definitions lead them astray?

I'm also very curious about this.

[Antonio the Sixth]

This is something I totally agree with, which doesn't surprise me too much, both because this has obviously become a very common approach in our area and because we seem to think in relatively similar ways even if we have very different worldviews and arrive at different conclusions. I think Kriesi's work has been highly valuable and find it to be a shame that some are inclined to dismiss the importance of class as a factor in voting behavior on the basis of his thesis while I think it simply proves we should find a way to reconceptualize what class nowadays means.

At the same time I think that when looking at voting behavior (as opposed to party systems) it is important to look at multiculturalism in Europe not only from a winners vs. losers perspective (which, to put it crudely, is basically the "economic anxiety" approach when it comes to voting behavior for RRWPs) but rather dig into the way various groups in society (not only the white working class) deal with it -- so I agree with you that there is more to this than just a pocketbook approach. Much research on the new right has focused on supply side factors and the functioning of radical right-wing parties within party systems, but in understanding voting behavior for RRWPs more sociological research related to the demand side would be more than welcome.

Yeah, I really think that's where the challenge is now. I would hope that it's possible to conceptualize "winners" and "losers" from globalization in a way that doesn't reduce it to a matter of narrow material self-interest. For example, a small-town resident might feel like they're losing out when the old grocery store closes, even if two fast-foods and one supermarket open in its place. There is more to one's comfort than how much you can afford. And of course you can extend this argument to things like hearing a foreign language while walking in the streets, as depressing as this reaction is to me. There's quite simply a large share of the population that isn't interested in what globalization is selling, including the aspects that I would say are morally good.

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Al made a very similar point to me a while ago, and yeah, it's a pretty important one. My plan is to start out with monographs of single countries and generalize from there. I'm hoping that's a possible way to avoid this pitfall.

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I haven't read that particular book, but I've read a few of the articles he coauthored with Katz developing their theory of the "party cartel", which seems closely related to the points he's making here. That's an incredibly depressing thesis, and at the time I first came across it I didn't want to entirely agree with it because it struck me as too sinister. Unfortunately, the events of the past 2-3 years have convinced me that they were absolutely correct.

Could you elaborate? Both on what it actually is, and how leftists incorrect definitions lead them astray?

I very often see leftists conflate neoliberalism with various things: at best, they reduce it to neoclassical economics (with which it's closely connected, but not quite the same), at worst it's used as a shorthand for the modern globalized form of service-based capitalism, or it's just assumed to mean a return to a 19th century conception of the role of the State in economic life. I find these definitions dangerous because they all miss the core foundation of neoliberalism and what makes it such a powerful, seemingly unstoppable force in our modern society.

One of the aptest definitions of neoliberalism that I've come across was from, of all people, Michel Foucault (which as you know isn't exactly my type of leftist!) in a 1979 lecture. Neoliberalism, he argued, is at its core an effort to extend the domain of economic analysis to question and areas that have never been thought of as having anything to do with economics. Neoliberals use economic notions - the market, with its supply and demand, the idea of investment, capital, entrepreneurship, income, etc. - to study things like education, crime policy, marriage arrangements, and even parenting choices. The scary thing is that this frame of analysis works: it has actually produced important findings when used in research. Those economic notions truly are that malleable: an income really can be anything that a given person may want to receive (even if it's only in the form of emotional satisfaction). A capital, then, becomes anything that allows a person to generate an income (including one's education, skills, physical prowess, etc.). And an investment is any cost one incurs (of whatever nature) to increase their capital. Every human being does that, in some form or another, and therefore everyone is an entrepreneur. Thus, the neoliberal framework is both seductive for its simplicity (the same 2 or 3 concepts rehashed over and over) and unfalsifiable by virtue of relying on very generic concepts.

Now, up to this point, it doesn't necessarily seem problematic. As long as the neoliberal framework is merely used by economists to produce findings on non-economic topics, there's little harm being done. The real problem, in my opinion (and this isn't something Foucault talks about, because he doesn't seem to have much to say about ethics in general) is that thinking in neoliberal terms isn't just a descriptive exercise: it has normative implications. When you start seeing markets everywhere, it's easy to start seeing the Market as some quasi-metaphysical archetype, rather than a socially constructed, historically bounded human artifact. And thus, we get to the natural conclusion of this line of thought: that the value of anything can be determined through a market process. Anything, including human beings. The ultimate implication of neoliberalism is that your worth as a person is a function of how much whoever you're trying to "sell" yourself to is willing to pay for you when you are competing with a myriad of other people. The Market for a neoliberal is like God for a Christian: the source of all meaning, all value in the universe.

If you think this is a caricature, try examining some of the assumptions that lead the latest neoliberal reform here or there. Every time I've done that, I've discovered that it's somehow predicated on the notion that, through pure and perfect competition, we can discover the true value of something. Why is it that people think they deserve being paid millions of dollars while half of humanity lives in misery? Well, because they auctioned themselves off on the market, and someone was willing to pay as much. But again, it's not even just about money. I've been told (can't really speak from experience, but I have it on good authority) that dating culture these days increasingly works like a competitive market too. The way many parents raise their kids, grooming them from birth to compete in everything, is another byproduct of that. That's why I think many leftists miss the point when they attack "corporate greed" as the root of all evils: greed is simply the byproduct of a prevailing normative framework. Until the left isn't able to argue against this entire framework, to explain why the market model misses something fundamental about the nature of morality, it will be powerless to stop neoliberalism. This is one of the reasons why I have grown increasingly interested in metaethical questions.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Any more questions?

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Does any of them speak in Valley Girl dialect? Otherwise, not interested.

I swear your California conversion becomes as terrifying as Torie's Hudson thing.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Does any of them speak in Valley Girl dialect? Otherwise, not interested.

I swear your California conversion becomes as terrifying as Torie's Hudson thing.

Oh come on, that's offensive. Reported.

[Kingpoleon]

If it was possible, would you prefer a GL-D66 Dutch coalition or a D66-PvdA Dutch coalition and why?

[Vosem]

Could you elaborate? Both on what it actually is, and how leftists incorrect definitions lead them astray?

I very often see leftists conflate neoliberalism with various things: at best, they reduce it to neoclassical economics (with which it's closely connected, but not quite the same), at worst it's used as a shorthand for the modern globalized form of service-based capitalism, or it's just assumed to mean a return to a 19th century conception of the role of the State in economic life. I find these definitions dangerous because they all miss the core foundation of neoliberalism and what makes it such a powerful, seemingly unstoppable force in our modern society.

One of the aptest definitions of neoliberalism that I've come across was from, of all people, Michel Foucault (which as you know isn't exactly my type of leftist!) in a 1979 lecture. Neoliberalism, he argued, is at its core an effort to extend the domain of economic analysis to question and areas that have never been thought of as having anything to do with economics. Neoliberals use economic notions - the market, with its supply and demand, the idea of investment, capital, entrepreneurship, income, etc. - to study things like education, crime policy, marriage arrangements, and even parenting choices. The scary thing is that this frame of analysis works: it has actually produced important findings when used in research. Those economic notions truly are that malleable: an income really can be anything that a given person may want to receive (even if it's only in the form of emotional satisfaction). A capital, then, becomes anything that allows a person to generate an income (including one's education, skills, physical prowess, etc.). And an investment is any cost one incurs (of whatever nature) to increase their capital. Every human being does that, in some form or another, and therefore everyone is an entrepreneur. Thus, the neoliberal framework is both seductive for its simplicity (the same 2 or 3 concepts rehashed over and over) and unfalsifiable by virtue of relying on very generic concepts.

Now, up to this point, it doesn't necessarily seem problematic. As long as the neoliberal framework is merely used by economists to produce findings on non-economic topics, there's little harm being done. The real problem, in my opinion (and this isn't something Foucault talks about, because he doesn't seem to have much to say about ethics in general) is that thinking in neoliberal terms isn't just a descriptive exercise: it has normative implications. When you start seeing markets everywhere, it's easy to start seeing the Market as some quasi-metaphysical archetype, rather than a socially constructed, historically bounded human artifact. And thus, we get to the natural conclusion of this line of thought: that the value of anything can be determined through a market process. Anything, including human beings. The ultimate implication of neoliberalism is that your worth as a person is a function of how much whoever you're trying to "sell" yourself to is willing to pay for you when you are competing with a myriad of other people. The Market for a neoliberal is like God for a Christian: the source of all meaning, all value in the universe.

If you think this is a caricature, try examining some of the assumptions that lead the latest neoliberal reform here or there. Every time I've done that, I've discovered that it's somehow predicated on the notion that, through pure and perfect competition, we can discover the true value of something. Why is it that people think they deserve being paid millions of dollars while half of humanity lives in misery? Well, because they auctioned themselves off on the market, and someone was willing to pay as much. But again, it's not even just about money. I've been told (can't really speak from experience, but I have it on good authority) that dating culture these days increasingly works like a competitive market too. The way many parents raise their kids, grooming them from birth to compete in everything, is another byproduct of that. That's why I think many leftists miss the point when they attack "corporate greed" as the root of all evils: greed is simply the byproduct of a prevailing normative framework. Until the left isn't able to argue against this entire framework, to explain why the market model misses something fundamental about the nature of morality, it will be powerless to stop neoliberalism. This is one of the reasons why I have grown increasingly interested in metaethical questions.

Legitimately and truly fascinating reading; this isn't a definition of neoliberalism that I've seen in the past, and it's one that seems to make a very great deal of sense

Is there some form of action you would advocate to try to alter or reduce the influence of neoliberalism on society? More broadly, if we are to accept the contents of your post as true, what do you think should be done about it?

[parochial boy]

yeah, thanks for that fantastic piece about neoliberalism.

To go back to one of your earlier points, what social-democratic type policies do you think do work, and could be sold to the public? and why  do you think that left wing parties haven't so far been able to adopt and sell these?

[Antonio the Sixth]

If it was possible, would you prefer a GL-D66 Dutch coalition or a D66-PvdA Dutch coalition and why?

Well, I'd definitely love to see the election results that would need to happen in order to make either coalition workable.

To be honest, I have a rather poor opinion of all three parties. I'm guessing GL is at least somewhat to the left of PvdA even on redistributive issues (David please tell me if I'm wrong), so a GL-D66 government would be preferable on that front. However, the idea of a government made up of entirely "urban postmodern cosmopolitan liberal" parties kind of terrifies me. D66-PvdA with the prospect of GL in the future forming an alliance with PvdA might be better in the long run.

[DC Al Fine]

I have a few different questions all around the same theme: the Western centre left.

1) What do you think are the Western centre left's best and worst decisions are in the past couple decades in terms of what issues to pursue, what demographics to target etc?

2) People often talk about stopping the departure of working class voters from labour parties. Let's flip that around. What can centre left parties do to stop turning into bobo parties?

3) Do you see the religious left having much of a future in Western politics?

4) Are there any circumstances (or hypothetical futures) where you can see yourself voting for a conservative party that don't involve keeping out the far right or massive scandals by the labour/socialist candidate?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Legitimately and truly fascinating reading; this isn't a definition of neoliberalism that I've seen in the past, and it's one that seems to make a very great deal of sense

I'm glad it speaks to you. Being able to reach a common understanding of what it is exactly that we disagree on is a very important and often neglected aspect of political debate, IMO.

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That is the hard part, yes. I'm planning to finally get around to reading Gramsci next summer, so I hope to find some of the answers there. I think his fundamental insight about the power of culture and the ways in which political forces can achieve (or at least resist against) cultural hegemony could go a long way toward offering a way out for the left.

What I think this implies, in very generic terms, is first of all that left-wing figures (politicians, intellectuals, pundits, surrogates, etc.) need to be very cautious about the language they use. The past 30 years have seen the increasing spread of words, concepts, and turns of phrase that only make sense if one accepts neoliberal assumptions. Because this vocabulary often sounds cool and convenient to use (and due to the proximity between the left-wing establishment and some of the segments of society that are most thoroughly imbued by neoliberalism), even principled leftists have tended to adopt it (and I'm occasionally guilty of it too).  By doing that, however, they are implicitly legitimizing neoliberal assumptions, and thereby undermining their own critique of neoliberal thought. They are, instead, reduced to advocating essentially for "neoliberalism done right", i.e. a framework where the market is still the fundamental mechanism for the assignation of value, but where the government plays a slightly more active role in maintaining pure and perfect competition (whereas the right has even stopped pretending that it cares about ensuring that the market works as it's "supposed" to). This is, in my opinion and in light of electoral trends I've seen in the past 20 years, a recipe for disaster for the left. Clarifying our thought and our speech is a necessary first step toward presenting an alternative to neoliberalism.

To go back to one of your earlier points, what social-democratic type policies do you think do work, and could be sold to the public? and why  do you think that left wing parties haven't so far been able to adopt and sell these?

One of the strongest findings of research in social policy is that broad-based, universalistic welfare systems tend to be considerably more generous (and thereby effective at reducing inequality) than those that purport to target those most in need. When a welfare program is restricted to the poor, it tends to be very unpopular, and therefore is likely to offer very low benefits and be frequently stigmatized. Programs that are accessible to a broad majority of the citizenry enjoy much broader support and therefore tend to be much more generous to everyone. It's easy to see that in America when you compare stuff like food stamps and AFDC, near-universal punching bags, with Medicare and Social Security, which even conservatives barely dare messing which. In order to "sell" a welfare program, you must design it in a way that a broad majority can derive tangible benefit from it, including relatively affluent segments of the middle class (those, of course, will have to pay for the program with their taxes, but they still tend to find the bargain advantageous).

This also means that citizens must actually be able see that they are getting these benefits from the State. It's been noted that one of the major reasons why Americans tend to be distrustful of government redistribution in the US is that they can see their money taken away through taxes, but they rarely see where this money is going for, because much of US welfare spending is "submerged". Rather than providing direct benefits to citizens, the US government instead tends to use corporations as a "middle man", giving them incentives and/or regulations to perform welfare functions (while still making a profit out of it). This helps explain why Obamacare remains so unpopular, and suggests that a single-payer system would have been much more difficult to undo once put into place (of course, putting it into place will be hard).

On the other hand, some kinds of policies, while well-intentioned and morally justified, tend to be more trouble than they are worth for left-wing parties. The most glaring historical example to me is nationalization of sectors of the economy that don't constitute public utilities (for example, having government-owned banks, factories, coalmines, etc.). While it's clear that workers in those industries are better off under public management than in the clutches of a private company, direct public management often proves unsustainable and results in serious headaches for left-wing governments (the quintessential examples being the Labour governments of the 1970s, of course). Overall, I would say that the left is better off leaving these companies under private control while empowering labor unions to fight for better working conditions and extract major concessions from companies. Another well-meaning policy which strikes me as problematic are stringent regulations against layoffs. Here, I can see the right-wing argument that they will only discourage businesses from hiring new workers, and thereby worsening long-term unemployment. I think it makes sense to trade more flexibility in hiring in exchange for generous, long-lasting and universal unemployment benefits.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Antonio your thoughts on a minimum income policy?

[Antonio the Sixth]

1) What do you think are the Western centre left's best and worst decisions are in the past couple decades in terms of what issues to pursue, what demographics to target etc?

One very good idea that the French left, for once, has come up with in the 90s (but that has since become a rhetorical punching-bag and that even Hamon is struggling to bring back) is the reduction of the workweek (or, to be more precise, the lowering of the time limit after with it counts as overtime). This is a crucial, I would say almost a civilizational, issue at the point we are in, since automation has increased and will increase productivity so dramatically. We can either choose to incorporate these productivity gains into the current economic framework of hypercompetitive, large-scale capitalism (ie, keep producing more and more while keeping wages under check in order to increase profits), or use them to build a society where material comfort can be attained without the need of working tirelessly in a harrowing, mentally stunting job. Reducing working times, coupled with the redistribution of profits through new measures such as the UBI, are steps toward the latter solution, which subordinates economic production to human needs rather than the other way around.

It would take me a decade to write about all the mistakes that the Western left has made over the past two decades. It would be a long and surprisingly eclectic list. Suffice to say that I'm not exactly a fan of the third-way turn (even if, in fairness, it wasn't all bad, at least not in every country). More than the specific policies that they pursued, I think what bothers me most is the attempt by some party to wash away any distinguishable working-class identity in the pursuit of catch-all politics. This is, in essence, the political equivalent of channel drift: a party with a clear presence in society and a defined constituency abandons it in an effort to expand its support. The strategy might succeed in the short run, but whatever the party has gained in breadth, it has lost it in depth. And so, at the first turn of electoral fortune, it can be decimated. In a way, I guess I'm defending the idea of "identity politics", although what I mean by it is a bit different.

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That's a very tough one. Obviously it would be suicidal to kick bobos out of the party in order to preserve a chimerical "working class purity". Many bobos are genuinely supportive of left-wing projects (like me lol ), and those are an important asset for left-wing parties. Hell, European socialism has always prided itself of the support of an upper-class "vanguard", and some of the most glorious pages in its history have been written with its help. The problem comes up when the middle-class becomes the party's core, the segment that drives its priorities and attitudes. Middle-class concerns are respectable and important, but they can't become a priority of the left, especially when the working class' position is coming under vicious and relentless attacks from neoliberal forces. So it must be made clear that bobos are welcome if and only if they share the broader goals of social democracy, not if they are trying to impose it their own agendas.

How you make that happen is a big question mark for me. I'm guessing a lot of it might have to do with rhetoric: if party leaders want to send a signal to their middle-class constituents that they won't dictate the agenda, they might try to adopt the cultural codes of the working class: speak in their language, talk about things they would relate to, refrain from any hint of snobbery. This is a good way to sort out bobos who are truly committed to a left-wing project from those who are just in it for themselves. Some left-wing politicians are pretty good at this (this is a big reason, IMO, why Bernie Sanders' GE potential was underrated). This has its own risks, of course, especially since VSPs in the media detest this attitude. But then again, right-wingers have often won despite the unanimous opposition of VSP, so who's to say a left-winger couldn't?

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I honestly don't know. I actually really wish they had, in part because religion provides one thing that's sorely missing on the left these days: a coherent ethical framework to pose as an alternative to neoliberalism. However, secularization is marching on, and especially so among the electorates of left-wing parties. What's worse, I fear that it creates a "besieged citadel" attitude among many religious people that pushes them to the right, leading to the sorry sight of the American Religious Right selling its soul to a presidential candidate as repugnant to all their professed values as conceivably imaginable, just for the vague promise of maybe some day rolling back parts of the changes of the past decades (a promise that, even if kept in policy, will have little to no effect on cultural attitudes because a person like T***p will never be credible to instill conservative values in the cultural sphere). For an alliance between left-wing forces and religious movements to happen, both will have to give up a lot. While I personally think that these sacrifices are worth it to combat neoliberalism, it seems that most leftists and most religious people disagree.

I hope cooperation could at least occur occasionally on specific issues.

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It really depends what you mean by "conservative". If I had to choose between a right-wing candidate critical of neoliberalism and supportive of measures for social inclusion and an ostensibly "left-wing" candidate who actually embraces neoliberal hegemony, I would most certainly choose the former (unless they're also a xenophobe or a sexist). To take a forum example, I'd definitely vote for you over Scarlet or NSV. However, it's very hard to see this kind of candidate emerging on the right in the near future.