The Left disappears

To survive as practice, The Left must amputate its own identity; to survive as critic, it must amputate its own speech.

It must do like The Right: to renew the esthetics without losing the ethics. Or what the right-wing says it does: no talking, doing; to resign to say «I'm The Left». Why? Because if a candidate to president is able to say «I'm a leftist» and «I'm a rightist» in the same sentence without having the public opinion coming to the conclusion that he's shameless or insane, we must assume that the «The Left» brand it's not useful anymore, it expired, with apologies of the good french men who sat on that side in the National Constituent Assembly more than 200 years ago.

This core idea should be learned, more than anybody, by the intellectuals, or rather, «the ones who think to the left». I don't say anything new; these are the words of Marx in his famous 11th thesis and of Walter Benjamin in The Author as Producer, when he said to the german intellectuals of his time (1930's decade) that they should stop bothering with that thing of pointing out the worker class faults about how a revolution must be made and that they should start themselves to stir up their place in the world -as a last resort, even if they didn't want to see it or even if they could deny it mentioning resources like thought freedom or lecture freedom, those intellectuals were also subjected to capitalistic relationships of production and, therefore, they were, besides of authors, producers, or rather, proletarians- and their intellectual tools. If they were writers -Walter said- they should revolutionize the literature, they should take over the technological advances (and the media, the speeches and esthetics of the capital, or rather, the media-mass machine) to open the field and enabling the chance that other workers become intellectuals too and to let the very figure of the intellectual disappear. To hell with the «social writer», who paints the drama of the poor people to «create awareness» -says Walter, with kinder words-; it was already shown that capitalism is able to absorb huge amounts of criticism and recycle them into merchandising. If the poor people move you so much, Walter said, share with them the only thing you can share, I mean, your tool; they will use it the way the want, and that's a way more revolutionary gesture than taking a stance.

Again: The Left must copy The Right. In what? In becoming the air that we breath, in becoming so obvious that it doesn't need to say «hey, loom at me, I'm here, I exist, pay me attention, I have history, I have projects, I have values». Of course that for The Right it was easy to do it. The political ass-whipping it gave to The Left by the end of the 20th century left it so free within the realm of the thinkable that it no longer had to define itself in relation to something else. And what before used to be a firm stance about certain ideological matters (defending the private property against the socialists; defending the nation against the internationalists; defending the community against the society; defending the tradition against the modern and trusting in the vital thirst of the individual against the peers organization) it became the floor from where the thinking is born, in the obvious. The Left responded with a double movement: to empty itself of revolutionary practices and brick itself up of ethical speech («we're the fair, we're the ones who should govern the world if the world was a better place»). It didn't work. At least,that's my conclusion when I see that the vast majority of people who are part of that thing called «The Left» (even if in the lightest and easiest form possible: the vote) take part without much problem in production relationships that imply the exploitation of people who live here by the corner or at thousands of miles away.

The Left is ideological or it isn't Left, but it mustn't look like it, it mustn't say it. It has to hide, disguise, change its clothes, not only because they case it, but because the clothes it wears smells bad. Stinks. And «the people» -as plural of person, not as The People because it no longer exists- notice it and run away.

The left must smuggle politics through other ways. That's why, when it is government it must use the disguise of the managers, it must wear a jeans, a khaki shirt and pointy shoes and speak in terms of results. Even more, it must go quicker than the demand for results; only this way it will acquire a surplus of of government that will allow it to do whatever it wants without anybody controlling it too much. And then, when nobody sees it, it must make a pincer movement consisting in organizing and stiring up the society. It must leave the politics to the people, the working class, the subordinates or anyone who is its object of desire, for them to do with it anything they want, to organize themselves, to assume a creative role and decide over the conditions of their own lives.

The Left must be evil and manipulating, like the murder of Curtain, the Agatha Christie's novel, who didn't kill anybody but it had so much control for the others to kill his enemies. The Left must compartmentalize itself, it must work like a network of conspirationists who don't know each other and act without mattering who they are and where are their fellows (like the neurons do). It must be disorganized, because organizations fall. It must stop worrying about the consequences of its subversive work, because it can't control them. It must activate switches and touch here or there to have an impact on its direction, but not controlling them. Controlling is what The Right does.

However, the left must not explain anybody how the world is. The left mustn't reveal the corruption scandals or the deep state secrets. Information is a placebo. The amount of people who find meaningful that Donald Trump has counterfeited the 95% of his tax declarations tends to zero.

The Left should understand that the vast majority of the population isn't and will never be leftists. And the leftists should understand that they will never convince the non-leftists by telling them how good and fair is The Left.

The Left should also assume that they will never have the power and that, if they ever have it, at that point they would become The Right. That its destiny is moving below and spurring above. It mustn't say all that, of course, but it must understand it.

Politics is organization, organization, organization. I guess that for many people it must be a thrilling activity, but for everybody it must be, on top of it, tiring and stifling. It's not heroical, it's not glorious, it doesn't have a destiny on sight and doesn't give great satisfactions. That's why, many find more fun ways of doing politics: art with social content, counterinformative journalism, critical thinking. That's not politics, or, at least, it's not left-wing politics. Do you understand? The adjective damns them. If you have to explain the joke, is because it's not funny.