{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8","title":"Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8","id":"e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8","uuid":"e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8","title":"Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics","normalized_title":"democracyandotherneoliberalfantasiescommunicativecapitalismandleftpolitics","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"isbns":[],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":229,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Democracy%20and%20Other%20Neoliberal%20Fantasies%20Communicative%20Capitalism%20and%20Left%20Politics","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8/search"},"page":{"printed_page":33,"pdf_page":43,"physical_index":43,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"f83f6bf6056eb0cf5e0d9d43410c53937c733d3667f814fc265632453dd9dca6"},"chapter":"Comunicative Capitalism & Left Politics","content":"Under communicative capitalism, communication functions fetishistically as the disavowal of a more fundamental political disempowerment or castration. If Freud is correct in saying a fetish not only covers over a trauma but in so doing helps one through a trauma, what might serve as an analogous sociopolitical trauma today? A likely answer can be found in the left's role in the colapse of the welfare state: its betrayal of fundamental commitments to social solidarity. A thorough account of this collapse is beyond the scope of my analysis here. Three aspects of left failure nonetheless mark the political trauma underlying technology fetishism: its abandonment of workers and the poor; its retreat from the state and repudiation of collective action; and its acceptance of the neoliberal economy as the \"only game in town:'\n\nIn brief, the late 196os and early 1970s witnessed a set of profound changes in the world economy, changes associated with declines in economic growth and increases in inflation and unemployment. As the following chapter explores, powerful figures in the corporate and finance sectors took this opportunity to dismantle the welfare state (by privatizing public holdings, cutting back on public services, and rewriting laws for the benefit of corporations) . For the most part, the American left seemed relatively unaware of the ways business was acting as a class to consolidate political power-a fundamental component of which was the passage of a set of campaign finance laws establishing the rights of corporations to contribute unlimited amounts of money to political parties and political action committees.21 Instead, coming out of the movements associated with 1968, increasingly prominent voices on the left emphasized and fought for personal freedoms, freedoms from parental and state constraints as well as freedoms for the expression of diferences of race, sex, and sexuality. \"While these ideals were situated within movements for social justice, their coexistence was precarious, as tensions at the time between workers and students made clear. Harvey writes, \"Pursuit of social justice presupposes social solidarities and a willingness to submerge individual wants, needs, and desires in the cause of some more general struggle . . . It has long proved dificult within the U.S. left, for example, to forge the collective discipline required for political action to achieve social justice without ofending the desire of political actors for individual freedom and for ful recognition and expression of political identities:'22 Just as corporate, business, and financial interests were coming together politicall}lj those on the left were fragmenting into particularities.23\n\nTECHNOLOGY\n\n33","previous_page":32,"next_page":34}