Emancipation versus Consolidation

Contradictions of the Political Theory and Practice of the Left in the Era of Expressive Individualism

Abstract

The article analyzes a number of controversial aspects of the political struggle of the left in developed Western countries. The author shows that increasingly the theory and practice of the left lead not to the consolidation of society, but to “culture wars” and disunity. According to the author, one of the reasons for this can be found in the idea of communism, which is still shared by many left-wing theorists. On the one hand, communism implicitly or explicitly implied a movement towards unity and brotherhood. On the other hand, socialist/communist projects have always been projects, first of all, of the struggle for freedom and equality — the struggle against the forces of alienation, exploitation and oppression. If in the first case it is usually emphasized that only a focus on the collective and public welfare can cultivate a truly social personality, free from egoism and competitive struggle, then in the second case society (social system, structure, etc.) is seen as a source of exploitation and oppression. It is shown that for a long time this duality was leveled by the universalism of class struggle: by fighting for freedom from exploitation, proletarians thereby fulfilled a universal mission, that is, they had to stop being proletarians and become part of global Humanity. However, today, as post-materialist values grow, leftist political struggle increasingly focuses on identity politics degenerating into insoluble cultural wars, presenting society as an essentially eternal repository of the forces of oppression, cultural appropriation, microaggression, and the like. As a result, the author puts forward a thesis about the need for a radical rethinking of the idea of communism. The movement towards the embodiment of communist ideals does not necessarily have to be viewed as something primarily associated with emancipation. Communism can have its own strong cultural program aimed at the unity of cultural space. It can be aimed primarily at the public good and dialogue. In this case, communism opposes, first of all, the forces of individualism (expressive individualism) and narcissism, with which today's, primarily Western, culture is increasingly permeated. In the context of Russia's search for its own path of development in response to extremely controversial Western ideological and value trends, such an interpretation of the communist idea seems doubly relevant to the author.