In view of the double threat of climate change and neo-fascism, leftists today have to ask themselves more than ever: What can I show solidarity with; how can I not act divisive; where are the lines of political cooperation? However, not in spite of this, but precisely because of this, criticism of the newest left is necessary.
It would be easier to include it in the identity-political battle on all fronts, if this battle were not too often directed against what was once called being left. And that was and remains, if the attribution is to retain any meaning: by definition there can be no particularist, purely affect-political or chauvinist left. In other words: the left as left was and will be constituted through the triad of inclusive universalism, emancipatory rationality and fundamental equality for all. In this respect, prospects of being affected are always necessary, but never sufficient for a political argument. Left political argumentation must, if it wants to remain democratic, be universal and rational, because otherwise it is not argued, but violence is exercised. This has nothing to do with Habermas’ idealizations, but is the minimum needed to defend political judgment so that it does not perish of total cynicism. Equality must come first, then deep differences. The same thing says: Solidarity only exists along the lines of non-identity. Identity politics, both the mainstream and the extremist of the Bubbles, is in fundamental contradiction to being left as soon as it acts in a particularistic, purely affect-political or chauvinistic manner. But how could such an identity politics advance to the prevailing moment of the left that no one can avoid?
This can only be understood sociologically, historically: only on the basis of 1989 and its declared end of history; the triumphalism of capital; the ‘united’ death knell against all Marxisms. It was only on the basis of this generalized hopelessness that the newest left of the separation was able to claim ‘Progressive’ or ‘alternative’ hegemony (classified in the absence of alternatives). Now, ironically, the more she works negatively on antiquated Europe, the more her antagonistic micropolitics curdle into an extra in the ideological ensemble ‘Sieg des Westens’. Because by structurally fading out the west-east axis in the dispositive of the north-south axis, the question of the system itself is systematically suppressed. The result is a naturalization of capitalism, so that only the distribution of the positions of cultures in the given economic context is up for debate. Logically, this necessarily follows the principle of competition with the psychology of resentment in tow, or: the continuation of the economy by political means. (Incidentally, this has nothing to do with ‘decolonization’, because since early modernity it has always been primarily capital that has colonized.)
The left question remains acute: how, with whom, with what solidarity? The answer, however, is no longer so easy to come by when one looks at the level of social totality. Left struggle is never qualified by affiliations, but by content. More attention must finally be paid to this again.