Unsere monatliche Auswahl frei zug\u00e4nglicher Netzartikel. Thema im Juli: popul\u00e4re Kultur, nationale Stimmung.<\/p>\n
Es ist so eine Sache mit der popul\u00e4ren Stimmung: Als Zeitgeist durch Medieninspektion rasch greifbar, durch Meinungsumfragen mit einzelnen Antwortvorgaben leicht erzeugt, beim Kontrast mit viel beschriebenen fr\u00fcheren historischen Punkten offensichtlich \u2013 aber was bedeutet das? Hilft einem das bei der Analyse der gegenw\u00e4rtigen Lage weiter? Eine kleine Fallstudie:<\/p>\n
Robert Stacy McCain schreibt im konservativen \u00bbAmerican Spectator\u00ab<\/p>\n
\u00bbPopular culture has been so corrupt for so long that many young people are incapable of making any distinction between vice and virtue, categories that sophisticated people are expected to reject as old-fashioned, if not altogether obsolete or, indeed, hatefully oppressive.\u00ab (\u00bbThe New Abnormal<\/a>\u00ab)<\/p>\n Formuliert werden diese Zeilen aber anl\u00e4sslich der Nachrichten \u00fcber den New Yorker B\u00fcrgermeister-Anw\u00e4rter Anthony Weiner, \u00fcber dessen private Vorliebe, Sex-Botschaften und -Bilder \u00fcber das Netz mit anderen Frauen als seiner Gattin auszutauschen, die US-amerikanischen Zeitungen gar nicht oft genug negativ berichten k\u00f6nnen.<\/p>\n Tod Lindberg h\u00e4lt im liberal-konservativen \u00bbCommentary\u00ab fest:<\/p>\n \u00bbDomestically, if ever was a moment for a resurgent radicalism, surely it came in the aftermath of the financial meltdown of 2008 \u2013 yet no serious proposal for systemic change to make us happier, wealthier, and freer has sparked the national imagination. Democracy and capitalism, American-style, remain in force. Yet no one in America, left or right, seems to think our system is healthy.\u00ab (\u00bbThe Depressed Hyperpower<\/a>\u00ab)<\/p>\n Selbst wenn das stimmen sollte (was nicht der Fall ist), hat diese popul\u00e4re Stimmung offenkundig keinerlei Auswirkungen auf die politische Situation. Weshalb sollte man sich dann Gedanken \u00fcber die vermutete \u00bbDepression\u00ab machen?<\/p>\n \u00c4hnlicher, \u00e4lterer Fall bei Perry Andersons kleiner politischen Parteiengeschichte der USA in \u00bbNew Left Review\u00ab, hier \u00fcber die Regierung Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) und ihre Abl\u00f6sung durch Ronald Reagan:<\/p>\n \u00bbThe keynotes of the Carter Administration were tight money and deregulation, to weaken labour and strengthen business. In Congress, the Democrats lowered the capital-gains tax and raised the payroll levy, while \u2013 in one vote after another \u2013 rejecting reform of health care, indexation of the minimum wage, consumer protection and improvement of electoral registration. At the Fed, Volcker was entrusted with a hard deflation. Neo-liberalism was now in the saddle. The short-term cost for Carter and his party was high, when the steep interest rates that were Volcker\u2019s cure for inflation provoked a severe recession. The electorate was not grateful. But a larger problem lay in the lack of an ideological message from the Democrats capable of embellishing the turn in any terms less dour than the need for belt-tightening. Something more alluring was needed.<\/p>\n Reagan\u2019s victory in 1980, as decisive as Roosevelt\u2019s in 1932, met the requirement. Neo-liberalism found its popular supplement in an optimism of national reassertion and moralism of individual self-reliance, laced \u2013 if not excessively \u2013 with faith in the Bible. This was an ideological encapsulation with which the Democrats were hard put to compete. Though they had pioneered the neo-liberal turn, they were handicapped by identification with the order that had preceded it, in which they had so long been the dominant party.\u00ab (\u00bbHomeland<\/a>\u00ab)<\/p>\n Unterschiedlich verteiltes \u00bbpopular supplement\u00ab, aber ziemlich \u00fcbereinstimmende Politik \u2013 immerhin zur Abl\u00f6sung von Regierungsparteien ist das Popul\u00e4re wohl gut.<\/p>\n David Graeber hingegen m\u00f6chte im linksliberalen \u00bbBaffler\u00ab das, was er \u00bbdominante Ideologie\u00ab nennt, frontal angehen:<\/p>\n \u00bbWhy not a planetary debt cancellation, as broad as practically possible, followed by a mass reduction in working hours: a four-hour day, perhaps, or a guaranteed five-month vacation? This might not only save the planet but also (since it\u2019s not like everyone would just be sitting around in their newfound hours of freedom) begin to change our basic conceptions of what value-creating labor might actually be. [\u2026] After all, this would be an attack on the dominant ideology at its very strongest points. The morality of debt and the morality of work are the most powerful ideological weapons in the hands of those running the current system.\u00ab<\/p>\n Deshalb will er folgendes Prinzip zum popul\u00e4ren Sentiment machen: \u00bbSubmitting oneself to labor discipline \u2013 supervision, control, even the self-control of the ambitious self-employed \u2013 does not make one a better person. In most really important ways, it probably makes one worse. To undergo it is a misfortune that at best is sometimes necessary. Yet it\u2019s only when we reject the idea that such labor is virtuous in itself that we can start to ask what is virtuous about labor. To which the answer is obvious. Labor is virtuous if it helps others. A renegotiated definition of productivity should make it easier to reimagine the very nature of what work is, since, among other things, it will mean that technological development will be redirected less toward creating ever more consumer products and ever more disciplined labor, and more toward eliminating those forms of labor entirely.<\/p>\n What would remain is the kind of work only human beings will ever be able to do: those forms of caring and helping labor that are at the very center of the crisis that brought about Occupy Wall Street to begin with. What would happen if we stopped acting as if the primordial form of work is laboring at a production line, or wheat field, or iron foundry, or even in an office cubicle, and instead started from a mother, a teacher, or a caregiver? We might be forced to conclude that the real business of human life is not contributing toward something called \u203athe economy\u2039 (a concept that didn\u2019t even exist three hundred years ago), but the fact that we are all, and have always been, projects of mutual creation.\u00ab (\u00bbA Practical Utopian\u2019s Guide to the Coming Collapse<\/a>\u00ab)<\/p>\n Ob Graeber nicht wei\u00df, dass diese Botschaft \u2013 \u00bbcaring and helping\u00ab \u2013 auch die m\u00fctterliche oder v\u00e4terliche, jedenfalls lehrerhaft-priesterliche Kernbotschaft der katholischen Kirche ist, die bislang wenig dazu beigetragen hat, f\u00fcr \u00c4nderung zu sorgen? Popul\u00e4rer Stimmung ist Graeber wohl n\u00e4her, als er selbst annimmt.<\/p>\n