"Joe Biden is, at the moment, losing his reelection campaign. And he is doing so while presiding over the strongest economy the United States has ever experienced," @AnnieLowrey writes:
Most of this article is standard lib quackery, but I want to focus on this part which is something I don’t see other people talk about
Why is the link between the economy and political sentiment fraying? Ironically, the dramatic improvement in material well-being over the past 50 years might be part of the answer: As countries get richer, voters have more latitude to vote their values, putting topics such as environmental protection, LGBTQ rights, and racial equality ahead of issues such as taxes, jobs, and wealth redistribution. This election cycle, voters might cite the economy as being the most important issue to them when talking to pollsters and journalists, but they may ultimately show up to vote (or change their vote) on the basis of another issue—abortion, say, or immigration.
LGBTQ, racial equality, environmental protection, abortion, immigration and so on are all economic issues. There is little to no separation between these issues and the economy. Our society’s modes of production are intimately linked with these issues and I think many people at least subconsciously recognize this (as long as they are personally affected). These issues both reinforce and are in turn reinforced by the MOPs of the society. And it is not even true that these issues have become more salient today than in the past. There is no shortage of civil rights movements, abolitionist, suffragette, Luddite, anti-war movements in the past. In fact, I would argue that the number of people leading comfortable lives today means that they have more to loose from a revolutionary shift in social conditions, and this (combined with increasing atomisation) is the cause of the rising tide of modern fascism.
I would argue that the number of people leading comfortable lives today
That is not what is happening today, though, that is what was happening in the 1950s–1970s, which perhaps not coincidentally is when the civil rights movement was happening.
What is happening today is that neoliberalism has reached a stage where even the low-to-mid tier petit bourgeois are feeling economically precarious, and that is where a fascist base is rising from. Trumpism: It’s Coming From the Suburbs
Most of this article is standard lib quackery, but I want to focus on this part which is something I don’t see other people talk about
LGBTQ, racial equality, environmental protection, abortion, immigration and so on are all economic issues. There is little to no separation between these issues and the economy. Our society’s modes of production are intimately linked with these issues and I think many people at least subconsciously recognize this (as long as they are personally affected). These issues both reinforce and are in turn reinforced by the MOPs of the society. And it is not even true that these issues have become more salient today than in the past. There is no shortage of civil rights movements, abolitionist, suffragette, Luddite, anti-war movements in the past. In fact, I would argue that the number of people leading comfortable lives today means that they have more to loose from a revolutionary shift in social conditions, and this (combined with increasing atomisation) is the cause of the rising tide of modern fascism.
That is not what is happening today, though, that is what was happening in the 1950s–1970s, which perhaps not coincidentally is when the civil rights movement was happening.
What is happening today is that neoliberalism has reached a stage where even the low-to-mid tier petit bourgeois are feeling economically precarious, and that is where a fascist base is rising from. Trumpism: It’s Coming From the Suburbs
I should have rephrased that differently. It’s more a matter of treats than stability, because capitalism will never really provide stability.