Among the emerging political factions of the 2020s, few have been more influential than the rise of the tech-right. Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson are the authors of a new book titled Abundance.
I don't really see anything "progressive" about this vision of the future. Actually progressive politics would involve challenging and critiquing the new cold war with China instead of trying to get rich by going along with it. Also whether or not degrowth cedes political ground to the right doesn't matter if the growth you're advocating for isn't compatible with reality. There simply aren't green alternatives to things like air travel. Maybe in in the future there'll be high speed rail and electric airplanes, but for the forseeable future any political program compatible with our ecological reality would have to call for "degrowing" our energy consumption.
This is such helpful context and a much more plausibly optimistic take on abundance than I’ve seen! But I worry about the way this essay finishes.
Is that really all that organized labor (and other left causes) should realistically hope for? A friendlier environment to organize in? It seems like at this moment there’s a chance to introduce more social policy as the primary focus of the left of center coalition, rather than trying to find a chance to smuggle it in after the tech companies have had their way.
This sort of seems like the green new deal minus the egalitarianism. Am I missing something?
Labor unions is retrofuturist passé. If we get it right there will be no labor to form unions from. I generally agree with the Abundance vision and see that a good first step for getting out of the rut we’re in. But we’ll also need a postmodern, post-capitalist, politico-social-economy story. Postmodern in the sense how @contraptions is using it, which I’ve interpreted as: illegible, not enforcing grand-narrative coherence, abandoning main character energy as narrative fuel, radically democratic, complexity-maximizing, emergent order. I don’t think anybody knows what it will be, but I can sense something in the noosphere taking shape.
The ezra hate is a bit over the top. I think about Adam curtis saying that we are no longer capable of grand visions or of solving problems. Well the visions are starting to emerge and I’ll take a green-focused, public transportation, housing boom utopianism over oligarchal fascist austerity.
“Today’s activist left makes a grave mistake when it lends support to consumption cuts and calls for a reduction in living standards… With the rise of these scarcity-minded (or neo-malthusian) factions, the left cedes important territory to the right.” We find you guilty of treatlerism. Interview Kohei Saito instead of these frauds. https://www.youtube.com/live/qMgMuDwJxms?si=52PmT9STiCRHbzMU
The problem with the perspective this book represents, and (and/or?) with left-accelarationism, has always been the way that ideology fails to grapple with two fundamental problems. The first is the problem of finite resources (or, more generally, planetary boundaries, if we think of biodiversity and pollution sinks as "resources"), which impose biophysical limits on what we can achieve. How soon we will hit the wall on these limits is a difficult empirical question, and maybe there is an argument against the most pessimistic views (where we are hitting them already), though I don't think there has been serious thinking from the utopian left that even purports to support a more optimistic view of how much growth the planet can tolerate. But the second problem is the dystopian quality of consumer society itself, which remains even if material standards of living could grow forever. I'm not surprised to see this kind of "politics of abundance" taking shape, since to me it always seemed likely that in the medium term politics in the west would be defined by the battle over who could present the most compelling vision of a new era of (restored? continued?) growth in material standard of living. And since we are culturally unable to face the limits of growth, I doubt anything else will gain mass appeal any time soon. For anyone who shares this point of view, the interesting project is to see how this style of politics can be inflected to ultimately position us for a less dystopian outcome on the other side of the end of growth. I guess it's better to have a "left-wing" politics of abundance to compete with what is emerging on the right than to have nothing at all.... though it will take some deeper thinking to be able to evaluate what sort of future 'abundance progressivism' is actually setting us up for. Maybe I actually do have a reason to read the book?
I’ve never understood the whole End of History take, or that Neo Liberalism was some sort of accomplishment. We turned American society into a strictly consumer culture with a supply chain dependent on cheap, highly exploited, often slavery adjacent labor. While the average American might have a reasonable quality of life and workplace protections, and that itself is highly debatable, the rest of the world making our shit does not. No amount of manufacturing our own chips or other technology hardware is going to change the fact that every piece of fabric, metal, or plastic you touch has probably been, in part, made by someone in the 3rd world. I haven’t read Abundance yet, but does it address the glaring, non-partisan addiction to endlessly cheap labor somewhere else in the world?
Found both of these articles in the Baffler more compelling than the defense of abundance presented here. Genuinely curious what Citarella and his readers would make of them
Good essay, although I think the question of the value of labor is still an open one in a highly automated abundance future. The comments here are dreck though wow! sorry about that
This is such an interesting take on the future of tech, economics, and politics. It’s wild to think that we’re seeing the collapse of neoliberalism and the rise of something new. I agree with the critique that while Abundance may offer a hopeful vision, it doesn’t fully grapple with the realities of poverty, climate change, and political corruption. The idea of superpower competition driving the future makes sense, but I’m left wondering: How can we move toward a more equitable future without reinforcing the same systems that got us here in the first place? It feels like we need to reimagine the very frameworks of capitalism before we can get to something truly progressive.
Come on, man. It’s Ezra Klein. A libtard doesn’t change his spots. I’m sorry. He’s a propagandist for austerity. He always has been. Pull up his 2016 Medicare for all commentary and all the means tested ideas that his outfit with Fatt Yglesius put out. If you believe in it, fine, but don’t frame it or you as left.
But neither the judicial, academic or govt systems are actually set up to do this. And the base urge of the modern Dems is to defend incumbents from reform.
No anti DOGE party is going to actually build high speed rail, because you’ll never get rid of the people in the way. Only abstractly decide it would be nice
So Ezra Klein admits that what he wants is "Neo New Deal [that] will not be a bottom up"? Well at least there's finally some honesty coming from him! But I'm not sure if he *fully* knows it but the New Deal Era wasnt just bottom up in regards to "trade union", the USA remained a thoroughly politically, economically, governmentally, financially, and scientifically decentralized system whose public sector governance structures were dominated by decentralized and publicly accessible mass-member parties.
I highly doubt he'll get what he wants, which sounds like a system even far politically, economically, governmentally, financially, and scientifically centralized the we are now (and we have gotten very centralized), but if he did it would likely be one of the most incompetent projects the world has ever known
But I am glad theres some tiny hints of honesty finally coming from him
I'm coming from the right of Klein and Thompson but am less hawkish or concerned about what China is doing.
Like Crab says below, "don't really see anything 'progressive' about this vision of the future. Actually progressive politics would involve challenging and critiquing the new cold war with China instead of trying to get rich by going along with it..."
I don't really see anything "progressive" about this vision of the future. Actually progressive politics would involve challenging and critiquing the new cold war with China instead of trying to get rich by going along with it. Also whether or not degrowth cedes political ground to the right doesn't matter if the growth you're advocating for isn't compatible with reality. There simply aren't green alternatives to things like air travel. Maybe in in the future there'll be high speed rail and electric airplanes, but for the forseeable future any political program compatible with our ecological reality would have to call for "degrowing" our energy consumption.
This is such helpful context and a much more plausibly optimistic take on abundance than I’ve seen! But I worry about the way this essay finishes.
Is that really all that organized labor (and other left causes) should realistically hope for? A friendlier environment to organize in? It seems like at this moment there’s a chance to introduce more social policy as the primary focus of the left of center coalition, rather than trying to find a chance to smuggle it in after the tech companies have had their way.
This sort of seems like the green new deal minus the egalitarianism. Am I missing something?
Labor unions is retrofuturist passé. If we get it right there will be no labor to form unions from. I generally agree with the Abundance vision and see that a good first step for getting out of the rut we’re in. But we’ll also need a postmodern, post-capitalist, politico-social-economy story. Postmodern in the sense how @contraptions is using it, which I’ve interpreted as: illegible, not enforcing grand-narrative coherence, abandoning main character energy as narrative fuel, radically democratic, complexity-maximizing, emergent order. I don’t think anybody knows what it will be, but I can sense something in the noosphere taking shape.
First two sentences here say it perfectly
The ezra hate is a bit over the top. I think about Adam curtis saying that we are no longer capable of grand visions or of solving problems. Well the visions are starting to emerge and I’ll take a green-focused, public transportation, housing boom utopianism over oligarchal fascist austerity.
“Today’s activist left makes a grave mistake when it lends support to consumption cuts and calls for a reduction in living standards… With the rise of these scarcity-minded (or neo-malthusian) factions, the left cedes important territory to the right.” We find you guilty of treatlerism. Interview Kohei Saito instead of these frauds. https://www.youtube.com/live/qMgMuDwJxms?si=52PmT9STiCRHbzMU
The problem with the perspective this book represents, and (and/or?) with left-accelarationism, has always been the way that ideology fails to grapple with two fundamental problems. The first is the problem of finite resources (or, more generally, planetary boundaries, if we think of biodiversity and pollution sinks as "resources"), which impose biophysical limits on what we can achieve. How soon we will hit the wall on these limits is a difficult empirical question, and maybe there is an argument against the most pessimistic views (where we are hitting them already), though I don't think there has been serious thinking from the utopian left that even purports to support a more optimistic view of how much growth the planet can tolerate. But the second problem is the dystopian quality of consumer society itself, which remains even if material standards of living could grow forever. I'm not surprised to see this kind of "politics of abundance" taking shape, since to me it always seemed likely that in the medium term politics in the west would be defined by the battle over who could present the most compelling vision of a new era of (restored? continued?) growth in material standard of living. And since we are culturally unable to face the limits of growth, I doubt anything else will gain mass appeal any time soon. For anyone who shares this point of view, the interesting project is to see how this style of politics can be inflected to ultimately position us for a less dystopian outcome on the other side of the end of growth. I guess it's better to have a "left-wing" politics of abundance to compete with what is emerging on the right than to have nothing at all.... though it will take some deeper thinking to be able to evaluate what sort of future 'abundance progressivism' is actually setting us up for. Maybe I actually do have a reason to read the book?
I’ve never understood the whole End of History take, or that Neo Liberalism was some sort of accomplishment. We turned American society into a strictly consumer culture with a supply chain dependent on cheap, highly exploited, often slavery adjacent labor. While the average American might have a reasonable quality of life and workplace protections, and that itself is highly debatable, the rest of the world making our shit does not. No amount of manufacturing our own chips or other technology hardware is going to change the fact that every piece of fabric, metal, or plastic you touch has probably been, in part, made by someone in the 3rd world. I haven’t read Abundance yet, but does it address the glaring, non-partisan addiction to endlessly cheap labor somewhere else in the world?
I love it when Joshua libs out.
Found both of these articles in the Baffler more compelling than the defense of abundance presented here. Genuinely curious what Citarella and his readers would make of them
https://thebaffler.com/latest/whats-the-matter-with-abundance-harris
https://thebaffler.com/latest/abundance-mindset-bronzini-vender
Good essay, although I think the question of the value of labor is still an open one in a highly automated abundance future. The comments here are dreck though wow! sorry about that
This is such an interesting take on the future of tech, economics, and politics. It’s wild to think that we’re seeing the collapse of neoliberalism and the rise of something new. I agree with the critique that while Abundance may offer a hopeful vision, it doesn’t fully grapple with the realities of poverty, climate change, and political corruption. The idea of superpower competition driving the future makes sense, but I’m left wondering: How can we move toward a more equitable future without reinforcing the same systems that got us here in the first place? It feels like we need to reimagine the very frameworks of capitalism before we can get to something truly progressive.
Come on, man. It’s Ezra Klein. A libtard doesn’t change his spots. I’m sorry. He’s a propagandist for austerity. He always has been. Pull up his 2016 Medicare for all commentary and all the means tested ideas that his outfit with Fatt Yglesius put out. If you believe in it, fine, but don’t frame it or you as left.
Interesting to watch.
But neither the judicial, academic or govt systems are actually set up to do this. And the base urge of the modern Dems is to defend incumbents from reform.
No anti DOGE party is going to actually build high speed rail, because you’ll never get rid of the people in the way. Only abstractly decide it would be nice
Klein, Keller, and Nick Land should do a lemon party together in their space pod. Go to jail card
So Ezra Klein admits that what he wants is "Neo New Deal [that] will not be a bottom up"? Well at least there's finally some honesty coming from him! But I'm not sure if he *fully* knows it but the New Deal Era wasnt just bottom up in regards to "trade union", the USA remained a thoroughly politically, economically, governmentally, financially, and scientifically decentralized system whose public sector governance structures were dominated by decentralized and publicly accessible mass-member parties.
I highly doubt he'll get what he wants, which sounds like a system even far politically, economically, governmentally, financially, and scientifically centralized the we are now (and we have gotten very centralized), but if he did it would likely be one of the most incompetent projects the world has ever known
But I am glad theres some tiny hints of honesty finally coming from him
I'm coming from the right of Klein and Thompson but am less hawkish or concerned about what China is doing.
Like Crab says below, "don't really see anything 'progressive' about this vision of the future. Actually progressive politics would involve challenging and critiquing the new cold war with China instead of trying to get rich by going along with it..."
In other words, yes, it *should* take 50 years to build high speed rail and 15 to build a bridge