Let them eat woke

This week, I am addressing the vexed concept of "wokeness", which dominates coverage of a new Jacobin report on the working class. Patreon subscribers can hear extended coverage on ConterIdeology...

“We should openly embrace liberal, tolerant but common-sense positions on the ‘culture’ issues,” says Tony Blair, in the foreword to a new report addressing Labour’s post-Brexit electoral woes, “and emphatically reject the ‘wokeism’ of a small though vocal minority.” If Blair has a skill, it is exploiting the left’s emotional fragility; if he has a signature aesthetic, it is style over substance. Thus, true to form, his inflammatory preface yielded controversy over findings that were otherwise a bore: anyone reading for a titillating debate on “wokeness” will be wasting two hours. The report is too dull to deserve its evil reputation.

Still, Blair got his wish: the aggregate of online leftism is nothing if not predictable. But for future reference, rather than rising to Blair’s bait, my preference would be to consider the conclusions of another report, also published last month, by the leftist journal Jacobin.

While Blair’s jibes are unsupported by data, and amount to evidence-free policymaking, the Jacobin report explores “wokeness” in conceptual and empirical depth. Its conclusions, even if predictable to many, do challenge echo chamber leftism and by extension much of Jacobin’s readership. “Progressives do not need to surrender questions of social justice to win working-class voters,” it warns, “but ‘woke’, activist-inspired rhetoric is a liability”.

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But there is a more profound problem here, which transcends immediate electoral considerations. My worry is that uncritical deference to academic/NGO fashions might render us incapable of remembering other, more collectivist traditions of liberation. Since “wokeism” does not and cannot aspire to universalism, we will be left with persistent, false divides between “taking race/gender/sexuality seriously” and giving credence to “ordinary” people. That divide is neither productive nor necessary. And the dichotomy, if it persists, will preclude the collectivism that could generate a real leftist revival, which is not the same as space in an Urban Outfitters book counter…

On Patreon (Subscriber Only)…

ConterIdeology: Wokeness, populism & the working class

James Foley and Pete Ramand take a deep dive into the findings of the Jacobin report. Does critiquing wokeness mean abandoning liberation politics for “social conservatism”? Or can the left recover socialist traditions of emancipation and build a new, universalist rhetoric of politics?

James Meadway on the future of capitalism

David Jamieson talks to James Meadway, former economic advisor to John McDonnell and director of the Progressive Economy Forum, about the aftermath of the COP26 summit, the crisis of neoliberalism in Britain, and the future of capitalism.

Free on Conter…

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Unionism is at a cross roads with no hegemonic leadership capable of sustaining or reproducing itself, argues Eddie Molloy.