By Dorothea Nikolaidis

“TINA: There is no alternative.”[1] Margaret Thatcher’s famous phrase has become the dying groan of a body politic apparently entering into a state of premature rigor mortis. The dismal slogan announced the beginning of a capitalist reconfiguration under which the institutional frameworks of liberal democratic societies would harden into their present distinctly brittle state.

From capital’s point of view this development was absolutely necessary. More than a century ago, it looked on the world and was horrified to find nothing but its own reflection: no continent outside of its reach, not an inch of soil outside its grasp. In more recent decades, the centralization of geopolitical power, and consequent globalization and financialization of economic relations have expanded capital’s room for maneuver into the “hidden continents” of intensified resource and labor extraction.[2] Yet this expansion of capital’s world has corresponded to a narrowing of our own. If, then, our political imaginations have withered, it is the bitter fruit of a political landscape which has grown barren.

A voice cries out in the desert: “prepare the way to utopia!”[3] Gary Wilder’s book, Concrete Utopianism challenges readers to expand their political imagination.[4] We are urged to move beyond the particularities of culture and identity, to think past the narrow horizons of our given world and, having transcended these barriers in thought, to demolish them in practice. As I hope to show, Wilder’s utopian approach, which has the merit of grounding his expansive and transformative political vision, ultimately proves to be too narrow a foundation for it. This essay is, therefore, intended as a contribution to the project of making utopia concrete.

I.

If the project of imagining a new world “has never been more urgent,” Wilder suggests that it “has never been more difficult.”[5] Wilder believes that this difficulty stems, in large part, from the sorry state of left thinking, which has largely abdicated its role as an advocate for transformative change in favor of various strands of pessimism.[6] This left-pessimism manifests itself in a number of currents in contemporary left theory.

Wilder organizes these currents into two types. First, there are left culturalist pessimisms, which employ “quasi-ontological claims about incommensurable lifeworlds and categorical claims about epistemological differences” against universalist political projects.[7] Second, there are left-presentist pessimisms, in which theorists become mired in “quasi-metaphysical claims about the eclipse of futurity and an ever-extending present.”[8]

The common thread which draws Wilder’s critical attention to these disparate political strands is a tendency to treat one or more features of our present social world as an untranscendable limit of political action.[9] Such restricted political visions have come to supplant more transformative projects as dominant tendencies in leftist theory. The result is a body of thought that has lost its critical posture.

For Wilder, this development is not merely an academic matter. Under the dominance of left-pessimism, Wilder suggests, we are barred from even “imagining… anti-imperial and anticapitalist futures” long before we reach questions of implementation.[10] If such restrictive theoretical frameworks are left uncriticized, they threaten to suffocate new forms of transformative political practice in their early stages of development. Wilder wants to open up a space for political imagination which he believes left pessimism has closed off. In particular, he argues that “Left thinking should attend more directly than it has in recent decades to translocal solidarity and heterodox temporality.”[11]

To this end, Wilder employs a method of “concrete utopianism.” By utopian, he explains, “I mean thought and action oriented toward that which appears to be, or is purported to be impossible when such impossibility is only a function of existing arrangements.”[12] Such utopianism becomes concrete, in his terms, when it locates the potentialities for this alternative world within the existing order.[13] This approach opposes left-pessimisms at the level of what Wilder calls their “realist epistemology.”[14] Where left-pessimisms see the world in its actual state, concrete utopianism sees innumerable potentialities some of which to the realization of different worlds.[15]

II.

What sort of different world are we realizing? Interestingly, Wilder’s politics seem underdetermined by his concrete utopian method. Concrete utopianism frees us from the world of “No Alternative” only to leave us stranded in a new and strange world of “unrealized potentialities within the actually existing.”[16] I examine the status of Wilder’s political program in light of his concrete utopian method. I suggest that a particular model of political subjectivity mediates the two, with problematic consequences for his political program.

There are some actualities which concrete utopianism as a method apparently does not dissolve. Here, Wilder’s political program finds its direction. He explains that much of the work follows from “the simple proposition that there is only one world, and it is defined by uneven relations of inextricable entanglement.”[17] That much seems undeniable. Wilder writes compellingly throughout the work about a host of problems created by or exacerbated by capital’s fragmented command structure.[18] His critiques of various theoretical provincialisms are likewise powerful. The “constitutive entanglements” between the universal and particular under capitalism — between cosmopolitan “human rights” and localist “sovereignty,” as between “history 1” and “history 2” — should make us, as theorists, think twice about the viability of any critical project dedicated to the denunciation of “universality” from the standpoint of any presently existing particularity.[19]

The argument moves, persuasively, toward an internationalist politics. But a political theory does not aim at rational persuasion for its own sake. Wilder is intervening at the level of left-thought with a view to effecting a change in left-practice. If we find the case for his normative project compelling, we should therefore ask how it compels. Why, and in what capacity does it compel us? And what does it compel us to do?

The answer to these questions becomes apparent on a closer inspection of the position occupied by the subject of Wilder’s concrete utopian approach. For Wilder, we come to occupy the political vantage point of concrete utopianism by questioning the given-ness of our present political reality. To this end, he furnishes us with a dialectical optics: a constellation of approaches and techniques from which to call this given-ness into question.[20] The object of these techniques is to cultivate a certain way of seeing-knowing which “would identify potentiality within the given that points beyond existing forms.” The world of the dialectical optic, then, is a world in which a subject drawing upon these epistemological techniques, sees past the given and freely chooses among a range of unrealized potentialities.

Having dispensed with the false constraints of given-ness, the subject encounters Wilder’s political program as a necessity to be freely chosen. It thus confronts the subject as an imperative, that is, an ought-to-be.[21] Emancipatory actions “require planetary politics,” and the subject, recognizing this requirement, obliges.[22] Wilder thus provides us with a model of the relationship between critical theoretical project and political program. It is a model in which subject and object are neatly delineated and separated from one another. On the one side, the subjective side, stands a political agent, on the other side a world of inert objective potentialities to be realized. Mediating the two are various techniques of seeing/knowing and tactics of solidarity which the subject may or may not take up as he or she chooses. The subject voluntarily selects among these potentialities according to a norm whose rational necessity she recognizes.

III.

Implicit in this model of theory and practice is a particular conception of the nature of subjects, objects, norms, and their relations to one another. This model is, in important respects, a voluntaristic one. In it, the contours of subject and object are clearly delineated. Political action becomes the rational acceptance of a norm. Wilder’s intervention aims to shape leftist practice by demonstrating the rational necessity of a given norm of political action. Wilder’s model, as I hope to show, does not do justice to the complex interpenetration of subject and object under the domination of capital. First, in place of Wilder’s model, I will suggest an alternative approach which traces the historical subjective-objective developments by which humans redefine their relationship to social objectivities by constituting themselves as collective subjects.[23]

The great importance which the ought-to-be occupies in Wilder’s political theory is understandable. The subjective choice of a norm of action is a distinctive feature of human action and thus of political theory. In human society, the norm as a structure of activity takes on a reality for which there is no analogy in nature.[24] In Marx’s phrase, “what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.”[25] The human agent, as real subject is always simultaneously acting and acted upon. Subjectivity, as we know it, then, always comes into the world entangled with objectivity. Ideality only ever confronts us as reality— as res.

Under the social domination of capital, such intertwining takes on particularly perplexing forms, as the products of human labor, as social products, take on a life of their own and come to dominate human life as an alien force.[26] When formulating a program for political action, we are always addressing subjects engaged in purposive action under historically determinate and, to varying degrees, determining circumstances.

The subjectivity of an individual compelled to sell their labor power in exchange for a wage in order to survive, for example, is determined in part by this circumstance.[27] Whatever portion of their life they spend working or looking for work, their life-activity is determined to that extent by market forces and the labor discipline of a capitalist firm. In the labor process they are both subject and object, simultaneously working up capital into useable, saleable form and being worked by capital, with its, in principle, insatiable appetite for surplus labor.

In this context, the prospects for labor resistance will depend on the action in concert of workers. The trajectory of struggle will depend on a number of factors including the degree and kind of integration of local firms into a global capital system, the capacity of economic and state actors to accommodate worker demands, and the vitality and flexibility of the capital system over all and at each of these levels.[28]

Depending on these factors, the antagonistic relation of capital to labor can take on a number of forms, ranging from organized international struggle to that seemingly automatic remainder of recalcitrance: a body which is pushed to its natural limits and cannot go any further.[29] Political subjects are also political objects. In capitalist society we find them always already positioned, and already entangled, to some extent even in spite of themselves in capital’s web of subject and object. Thus, while it is true that political subjects are not a mere product of mechanical forces, they are equally not a product of rational choice. That is not to say that the activity of political subjects is devoid of deliberate choice or voluntary action, but such voluntary action takes place in the context of, and with a greater or lesser awareness of, a broader and logically prior historical situation in which such subjects are constantly being shaped and reshaped.

As the contours of the political subject vary, so too does its object. The outer limits of political action will vary with the extensive and intensive degree of coordination between persons. What for one collective subject seems open to change, might, for another settle into the background constituting the outer limit of its field of potentialities.[30] To grasp this process, it is necessary not only to identify historically mutable social forms as bearing potentialities for change, but to specify the conditions under which social forms take on the form of this or that potentiality. In this way, a political theory grasps political change not merely as an abstract possibility but a concrete process already underway. In place of the free subject of wilder’s model, it presents us with an ongoing development resulting from continuous interactions between social objectivities and subjected subjectivities.

IV.

The foregoing remarks suggest a model of subjectivity which emphasizes the historical and contextual grounding of the subject, and engages in political prescription by examining the laws of motion of social forms. In contrast, Wilder’s model lacks certain important conceptual tools for analyzing the interaction of social movement and socio-historical context.

This lack becomes particularly apparent in his treatment of left-culturalist currents. Wilder disputes left-culturalisms in theory but declines to give an account of their basis in practice. Underlying these overly rigid theories of incommensurability, he finds a faulty methodology which mistakes historically mutable positions under capitalism for discrete, ontologically fixed differences.[31] He proceeds with his concrete utopian method to dissolve all such distinctions by pointing to their “constitutive entanglements” with one another.[32] He shows how every such particularity depends on a global capitalist framework which constitutes both universal and particular. But having shown the mistake and its prevalence, he does not show the historical conditions under which the mistake could prevail. Elsewhere, he comes close to a historical explanation in the neoliberal ideology of “No Alternative,” and its effect on left-thought.[33] But again, he does not show how the shape of neoliberal society gives rise to the experience of No Alternative, or what the contours of this experience are. We are left with a series of interlocking free-floating ideologies, perhaps propagated by a ruling class or their apologists, without a basis in the constitution of capital’s current regime of accumulation.

This omission raises questions about the historical situation of subjects in Wilder’s theory. Where in the world are mistakes just mistakes? In what context can proletarian internationalism become the object of a rational choice? Wilder correctly observes that Mignolo’s dictum “I am where I think” fails to account for the historically determinate and contradictory constitution of the “where” where “I” thinks.[34] Instead, the subject of Wilder’s political theory seems to lack a spatio-temporal location altogether. Wilder’s political response to left culturalism involves surveying a number of tactics of translation as techniques for building translocal solidarity.[35] Implicitly, this approach treats the problem of translocal solidarity as a technical issue to be resolved through the use of the proper tool. In this way, his approach elides questions about the ways in which the global capital system, at any given phase of its historical development, enables or frustrates translocal solidarities through the resonances and dissonances, the synchronicities and syncopations of all the various antagonistic relations spread across its broad surface.

V.

How, then, do we envision a shift in left-thought from pessimism to planetary politics? The subject of concrete utopianism carries with it some unfortunate consequences for the prospect of political implementation. I have argued that this theoretical subject is not adequately situated in a socio-historical context. I have also argued that for this reason, the model does not have an account of the conditions under which social movements become and cease to be viable.

The result, ironically, is its own kind of left-pessimism. If the theoretical tendencies which Wilder decries are the result of widespread and persistent intellectual errors then there is reason to believe that they will always be with us. This is so even, or especially, to the extent that Wilder recognizes neoliberalism’s role in propagating and entrenching these forms of thought. If left-culturalism can survive by ruling class propagation alone, there is no winning against it. Wilder gives some indication that he recognizes this problem during his engagement with Chatterjee. In defense of his rejection of a “utopian idea of cosmopolitanism” Chaterjee asks rhetorically which social forces are likely to realize such an ideal.[36] Wilder’s response is to warn against an overemphasis on likelihood as a determinant of political strategy.[37] His warning is well-motivated, but it is notable that he does not answer Chatterjee’s question.

Elsewhere, Wilder seems to accept Chatterjee’s assessment of likelihood. He impliedly grants that Chatterjee’s politics conform to the “general direction in which history has unfolded.”[38] Elsewhere, he qualifies this concession and disputes Chatterjee’s assessment of history as “state centric,” pointing to the vast number of internationalist experiments which the left has engaged in over its history.[39] Even so, this history of internationalism, in Wilder’s account becomes yet another long and storied tradition to be drawn on and not a historical process which we are drawn up into. Instead, he leaves us with the bare possibility that politics could take a different shape, and the daunting task of correcting a global and institutionally dominant misconception.[40]

Wilder’s response to Chatterjee’s skepticism is especially striking given the extremely questionable nature of Chatterjee’s historical assessment in the present period of capital accumulation.[41] The neoliberal globalization of capital has not only greatly diminished the efficacy of Fordist and social-democratic strategies in the global north, it has seriously undermined the viability of developmentalist, and state socialist political strategies in the global south.[42] The post war accumulation system with its distinctive intertwining of interventionist states and monopoly capital ground to a halt and it became necessary for capital to search for new “hidden continents” once again.[43] The present system is marked by a financialization and ever closer international integration of capital, achieved through great strides in logistics, labor flexibilization and trade liberalization, all implemented under the thinly veiled geopolitical dominance of the United States.[44] If this integrated accumulation system has lost some of its confidence and stability, coming under attack from both left and right, capital is nonetheless not in a position to dispense with it. As this integrated global system comes under increasing stress, resistance to it can no longer be comfortably fractured into stable, discrete state-sized units. Internationalism will not arise as a shared rational conviction, but as a final appeal following a total exhaustion of state remedies.

VI.

I have argued that Wilder’s Concrete Utopianism, while putting forward a compelling political vision and an incisive critique of political pessimisms, relies on a flawed model of subjectivity. This model leads to unhappy results when it reaches questions of political implementation. I have suggested nonetheless, that Wilder’s intervention comes at an opportune historical moment: one in which his proposed “planetary politics” has become a real possibility. Wilder’s Concrete Utopianism, like many utopian projects before it, anticipates as a theory what must later come about as a movement.[45] Wilder has made his case for the desirability of international solidarity. The task remains to trace the trajectory of historical development to a point at which such planetary politics become possible. Wilder has given us utopianism. We are left with the ongoing task of making utopia concrete.

Notes

[1] Istvan Meszaros, Beyond Capital, xvi (1995).

[2] Meszaros 35; Kyug-Pil Kim “The Neoliberal Strategy of South Korean Conglomerates” World Review of Political Economy (Spring 2022).

[3] Paraphrase of Is. 40:3.

[4] Gary Wilder, Concrete Utopianism (2022).

[5] Id., at 1.

[6] Id., at 2

[7] Id.

[8] Id.

[9] Id.

[10] Id., at 1.

[11] Id., at 2.

[12] Id., at 8.

[13] Id., at 8-10.

[14] Id., at 10; Id., at 17-34.

[15] Id., at 17-34.

[16] Id., at 28.

[17] Id., at 2.

[18] Id., at 38.

[19] Id., at 64.

[20] Id., at 32.

[21] Note the structural similarities between this model of politics and Kant’s model of autonomy. See Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals 4:432, 4:439 (1785).

[22] Id., at 2.

[23] For an extended discussion of this alternative model, see my reflections on Utopia 1:13. Dorothea Nikolaidis, “No-Place Like Home: Reflections on Marx and Utopia,” Utopia 13:13 (2022).

[24] Paraphrase of Georg Lukacs, Ontology of Social Being, Vol.2, 7 (1978).

[25] Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. I, 127 (Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling trans., 1887) [hereinafter Capital].

[26] Karl Marx, Wage Labor and Capital (1849).

[27] Wage Labor and Capital; Capital 127-31.

[28] See Meszaros’s discussion of the interaction between capitalist expansion and political struggle and his distinction between cyclical and structural crises. Meszaros 30-38.

[29] See Marx’s discussion of “so-called necessary wants.” Capital 121. See also his extended discussion of the capital’s methods of maximizing surplus value extraction. Capital 126-378.

[30] Georg Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness 131-149 (Rodney Livingstone trans., 1968).

[31] Wilder, 62-70

[32] Id. at, 64.

[33] Id., at 1; Id., at 17-34.

[34] Id., at 66.

[35] Id., at 70-85.

[36] Id., at 48.

[37] Id.

[38] Id., 47.

[39] Id., at 50-61.

[40] Id., at 48.

[41] See my discussion of these trends in my reflections on Utopia 3/13. Dorothea Nikolaidis “The Ghost in the Machine: Notes on the Present Trajectory of the Class Struggle,” Utopia 13/13 (2022).

[42] John Walton & David Seddon, Free Markets and Food Riots (1994); Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes, 408-11 (1994); Messzaros 677; Meszaros 622-39.

[43] Meszaros 35.

[44] Jasper Bernes “Logistics, Counterlogistics and the Communist Prospect” Endnotes; Kyug-Pil Kim “The Neoliberal Strategy of South Korean Conglomerates” World Review of Political Economy (Spring 2022); see Meszaros’ discussion of the geopolitical reconfiguration underlying capital’s intensive totality at 689-90.

[45] Karl Marx and Frederich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848); Frederich Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1880).