I quote this conclusion from Aurelian's latest essay on Substack:
What are we going to do then? Well, we can start by acknowledging reality: the hour is getting late, and it's not a time to talk falsely. Forty years of globalised neoliberalism have broken our societies, our economies and our political systems, and we no longer have the ability to put them back together.
This doesn't mean that we can't, and shouldn't, try to do things at a personal level. In an essay last year, I suggested that we needed to start cultivating (or re-cultivating) the mindset that has seen people through harsh times before, that of doing the right thing in the absence of any real hope for the future, because it was the right thing.
One of the examples I gave was the French Resistance, and it's worth pointing out that Samuel Beckett, whom I mentioned earlier, served with distinction in the Resistance and was honoured by the French state after the War. (Indeed, the war years explain much more of the atmosphere of his work than is commonly realised.) So let's end with a citation from the conclusion of one of his bleakest (!) works, The Unnameable:
You must go on. I can't go on. I will go on.
I don't always agree with all Aurelian (who uses a necessary pseudonym) has to say, but this resonates very strongly with me.
The rest of the essay is well worth reading, as is the back catalogue.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
Thank you, Richard.
I have let Aurelien know.
Thanks
I found having my reality mirrored back, strangely comforting.
As Voltaire wrote in Candide ‘We must cultivate our garden’ and (given the frailty of food supply chains with climate chaos) it is both literal and metaphorical good advice.
I have mentioned Peter Turchin’s End Times on this blog before, but I think the ideas he put forward in that book have a lot of weight to them, and I can see them playing out daily. It appears that we in the West, particularly the UK and the USA, are in or approaching our “End Time”, a period when a society collapses under the weight of inequality and elite overproduction. Our political elites are increasingly incompetent and self-serving, displaying little knowledge of or talent for managing civic society. They are simply competing for fewer and fewer spaces left available at the top, looking for scraps dropped from their masters. The only aptitude they show is the ability to play the game, with established elites like Starmer trying to elbow aside counter elites like Farage for the dwindling opportunities to power, and deliver the increasingly desperate and impoverished polity to their billionaire masters. Our End Time shows no sign of actually ending anytime soon, either. There is still a lot of money sloshing around to splash at the competing elites, and I think it will be used to control the masses, likely through fascism or some form of authoritarianism. Once this eventually fails, will we see the light at the end of the tunnel? Hopefully. There are a lot of ideas being left around by various individuals and groups, progressive ideas, new ways of doing things, and once the current madness ends and the elites have all killed each other, metaphorically or perhaps even physically, hopefully one of these new ways will be picked up and we can re-build. One thing is for sure: the West, as a globally dominant hegemony, is over. Most of the world’s young people will be born in the global South, and we can expect the next century to be decided there.
Thank you for sharing this Richard, I hadn’t heard of Aurelien before but his essay was a fantastic read and made a lot of sense. Please do share other material like this. Could you two collaborate as you seem to have similar ideas?
The only thing I would say though, is that there doesn’t seem to be any solutions offered (unless I missed them?), at least for the common man like myself, to the inevitable downwards society collapse we’re heading for. But maybe that’s the point, maybe this is just part of human civilisation?
Slightly off topic, but linked to how society is going due to technology and neoliberalism – have you watched the latest seasons of black mirror on Netflix? I find it a great show and that it highlights the danger of the ever evolving technology, neoliberalism, and how it will only serve the elite at the detriment to the rest of us. Thought you might find it an interesting watch if you haven’t done so.
Cheers
The book I plan would be on solutions…
Brilliant! I look forward to being an initial purchaser! You’ll be providing signed copies for your most faithful on this blog though right ;-)? Haha
We’re a long way from that as yet!
Having discovered Beckett through reading John Gray in 2023, I’ve found it quite comforting to be honest.
It is not beyond Beckett to find life a trial and even be angry at it. Nor was he a saint. But what sets him apart is how he then consciously chooses to react having found himself to have been here. Denied that choice (and our being here is made by others) he bears his existence/accepts it but sets out to control what he can to make it bearable. But he does this in consideration of others, not just himself. That is his lesson to me.
At the moment though I am struggling though with an overwhelming sense of disappointment, both in myself and life in general. Beckett has made grasping that and dealing with it easier.
I’ve read James Knowlson’s ‘Damned to Fame’ (1996) and John Calder’s ‘The Philosophy of Samuel Beckett’ (2001) and hope to learn more.
When I read the article by Aurelien, I was left wondering, what is life, if there is no hope?
With no offered solution, or even mitigation, we will just muddle through, and we’ll just have do do the best we can with what we have. I suggest we need to avoid the blame game, in general that is destructive at all levels from us as individuals, or as groups through to our country and the alliances chosen for us by our politicians. They are the ones that do frighten me, lacking in vision and foresight. I doubt they will ever admit to our society’s true state, it smacks too much of their failure and they can never admit that.
We also have choices and decisions to make; some small, others large. It will be those choices and interactions with others where we can each make a difference.
I am reading Russell’s “History of Western Philisophy”. It is superb & beautiflly written. Book 3 Part 1 – 1 has a last para that is remarkable (given that much of the book was written in WW2):
“The modern world seems to be moving towards a solution like that of antiquity: a social order imposed by force, representing the will of the powerful rather than the hope of common man” He notes the need for a new philosophy
(I have missed out the bit covering Augustine of Hippo – a fraud and liar in my view).
What is clear is that social order is increasingly imposed by force (no more demos for the peasants) and people will be forced to accept what the gov’ & corporations deem is best – like it or lump it. One hopes that the local elections results in a LINO wipe out – sadly it might mean that Deform dolts get in.
I have not read that since the 80s….
I am with you on Augustine
Agreed about social order and again reflecting on Nixey’s book, I have concluded that reason can only ever really exist where there is a contest of ideas and debate, argument, exploration, pluralities etc.
If one side sets out to win, to convert, to supress contest, then you are more likely to have unreason rule.
The aim has always to be a synthesis, because that is where it is on most occasions, amongst human confusion.
Tom B, a bit above your post, refers to Turchin’s End Times. Fighting among competing groups of elites because there aren’t enough niches left for their multiplying numbers (think back to the scandal of v. rich Americans trying to bribe Harvard etc for a place for their offspring) can trigger civil strife, even civil war, and the populace splits between opposing factions. In the absence of any organised progressive political movement in the UK, and given the likelihood of worsening climatic conditions including food scarcity, it’s possible that the repressive force of government won’t be enough to prevent breakdown of the State into a variety of local arrangements. How SEZs might play out then is beyond my imagining but repression and oppression won’t stop the young.
Aurelian lists the things that he feels no longer work. But it is not a static situation. The web enables us to link and spread ideas in a way not possible in the 1960s or 70s.
I feel there are many people of political good will among the Lib Dems, Greens, some of the rank and file Labour Party, SNP , Plaid Cymru , even some Conservatives. Many not in any party.
What they lack most ( but not exclusively ) is an answer to the “how will you fund the necessary changes?” And also, “don’t we need the mega rich?” (even yesterday Trump came out with that )
That is why Funding the Future is part of the solution and so important. Keep talking about solutions, Richard.
I sat with many people in despair over the years and often where no solution seemed likely. Yet, somehow, most of the time, something we hadn’t anticipated would emerge. The human spirit is resilient .
As I just said to a publisher, solutions are what I am about….
An excellent book that was written by John Ralston Saul in the 1980 or 1990s describes what we are seeing today “Voltaire’s Bastards: Dictatorship of Reason in the West”
Yes, I bought it when it first came out – a brillant demolition and offers importanty pointers to where we need to be – not least uncertainty and dubt.
I think the best thing we can do is GIVE FULL SUPPORT TO THE GROWING GRASSROOTS RESISTANCE TO TRUMP.
Over 700 demos last weekend.
In the end , the American people hold the trump card in snuffing out Trumpism in the USA and the world.
Alan Story
THE LEFT LANE
I tried to resist adding to what is an excellent blog and subsequent set of comments. But I can’t resist adding the quotes below.
The most recent is from 2010, or a little before that, as it would have been at least a year between writing and publication. The other two are either nearing or over 100 years old. None are positive or uplifting, I’m afraid. And nothing has changed for the better in that time. And nor do I now believe it will. The most recent incarnation of capitalism ‘red in tooth and claw’ – neoliberalism – has, and continues, to ensure that.
And what is stunning – particularly with regard to the quote from Keynes, is that the descent into the economic, environmental and social pit into which we slide ever faster and deeper, has been recognised for decades, as have the solutions. But like Nero, a roster of politicians, have, since 1979, fiddled, and fiddled, and fiddled. Collectively they should hang their heads in shame. But they won’t, of course. Anyway, I digress. Read on, and weep.
“Instead of using their vastly increased material and technical resources to build and wonder city, the men of the nineteenth century built slums…[which] on the test of private enterprise ‘paid’, whereas the wonder city would, they thought, have been an act of foolish extravagance, which would, in the imbecile idiom of the financial, have ‘mortgaged the future’…The same rule of self-destructive financial calculation governs every walk of life. We destroy the beauty of the countryside because the un-appropriated splendors of nature have no economic value. We are capable of shutting off the sun and the stars because they do not pay a dividend.” John Maynard Keynes. Quoted in Tony Judt, (2010) “Ill Fares The Land”
“The true criticism of market society is not that it is based on economics – in a sense, every and any society must be based on it – but that its economy is based on self-interest. Such an organisation of economic life is entirely unnatural, in the strictly empirical sense of exceptional.” Karl Polanyi (1944) “The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Out Time”.
“In the famous opening paragraph of the ’18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’, Karl Marx observes that al facts and personages of importance in history occur twice: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. There is much to be said for this view, but it does not exclude the possibility that even tragedies may repeat themselves. Western commentators who celebrated the defeat of Communism confidently anticipated an era of peace and freedom.We should have known better.” Tony Judt, (2010: 190). ‘Ill Fares the Land’.
And to finish, I’d add a film worth watching if you want to see what the near future (i.e. within 50 years) holds. Elysium (2013), but forget the ‘happy’ ending.
Thanks, Ivan.
worth watching. A Century of Self by Adam Curtis. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=century+of+self+documentary
The appeal to Beckett and the French Resistance might be read in terms of stoicism in the face of despair – or reason to hope. What actually happened, after all, was that Jean Moulin succeeded in bringing together all the key strands of anti-fascism – from Gaulists to Communists – to agree on the Programme of the Conseil National de la Résistance – the foundational policy framework of post-war France much like that if the 1945 UK Labour government (public ownership of main utilities, bilding a welfare state, entrenchment of human rights, etc). The fact is that in the absence of the extreme right (for obvious reasons) political centre and left consensus became possible.
It’s the historical norm for social progress to come out of crisis in the status-quo. Historians of transatlantic slavery now see its ending not only as the result of political campaigning, but more in terms of underlying systemic crisis, including the increasing costs of slave resistance. The Russian and Chinese revolutions came in time of war, as did the victory of the Suffragettes; the progress of civil rights in the 1960s was intimately linked with youth ‘counter culture’, Vietnam, Cuba…
In his book The Ministry of the Future, Stan Robinson speculates that horrific extreme weather events, and increasingly extreme climate protests, will ultimately bring the world together to forge a new, sustainable, social and environmental settlement – an optimism that is in fact more in line with history’s key lessons than more dystopian visions.
Social progress is not the norm when empires or civilisations collapse. Tainter suggests that where devolution is possible (small viable regions where a simpler economy and social order can survive), some breakdowns aren’t altogether destructive but for us now, the climate and ecological catastrophes reduce even those options. Groups in many countries have seen the writing on the wall and given alternatives a go or refused to bow to diktat. Pablo Cassals offers a similar bon mot to Beckett: the situation is hopeless, we must go on.
This is neoliberalism today:
“World’s biggest investor BlackRock on asset buying spree in “undervalued” UK”, The Standard, (25 Apr 2025)
https://www.standard.co.uk/business/blackrock-larry-fink-uk-economy-keir-starmer-growth-b1224196.html
Starmer is selling the country’s assets to overseas investors at a discount.
“I don’t always agree with all Aurelian”.
Clever, erudite, thought-provoking; but I confess I find the substance more elusive. Unlike here, why does he attract so many trolls, (and angry, dogmatic pro-Russian trolls) BTL? They seem to thrive there. It provides a depressing insight into the ‘state of play’, if that is where we all are (and quite unlike here; here, it seems is the outlier). I also confess that I commented BTL on Aurelian simply to expose the vanity of the many trolls (who believe they are the only ones who see through people, and can exploit it. Patience alone is required, and up one popped).
But I only did this because Aurelian had inserted the Linguistic Turn in Philosophy as the explanatory centrepiece of a blog on Russia, the Ukraine and the West. Really? I saw no evidence anyone BTL had noticed, or taken his thesis on board, or wished to discuss it (and I therefore used its arcane nature to flush out a troll). While Aurelian may understand the principles of the Linguistic Turn, this appreciation does not apparently extend to its later critics, or serious limitations.
By substance in this context I mean simply; what do we do (and what should we read, to be able to understand, and to direct the attention and priorities of others)? What is the process “we” (in this case, chastened European states) need to do? I do not find Aurelian’s thoughtful prose functionally usable, when faced with immediacy and the cold light of day. Functionally usable illuminating blogs seem to me (in our present hour of need) to require us to learn some hard lessons from people nearer the frontline of Europe, and the chaos that has been spread over us (not just by Trump – who perhaps is being ‘tapped along’, if we need a bigger picture).
What on earth do I mean? I mean that rather than Aurelian’s paralysing analysis, we need substance; for example, Minna Ålander, a Finnish analyst at Chatham House provides an urgent Nordic perspective, in for example ‘Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts: Lessons from the Nordic-Baltic Region on Countering Russian Gray Zone Aggression’ (https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2024/11/russia-gray-zone-aggression-baltic-nordic?lang=en). Ålander is now also writing for the Phillips P O’Brien Newsletter.
The blog is on Russian Gray Zone aggression in the Nordic countries, a form of asymmetric hybrid warfare (asymmetric because the target democratic states internally cannot respond ‘symmetrically’); through a wide range of different types of attack: “non-physical attacks (including disinformation campaigns, cyber attacks, and prank calls to officials) and a myriad of physical incidents (including sabotage of private or public property and critical infrastructure, instrumentalized migration, property purchases in strategic locations, GPS jamming, and assassination plots)”. In addition, strategic property purchases in a target state, instrumentalised migration, information warfare, exploiting the problem of attack attribution, and so on. Ålander provides specific illustrations.
Ålander makes few direct references to Britain, but her piece is a timely illustration of the disastrous British political and security somnolence over the last twenty plus years (since Putin came to power). Putin has had twenty years to carry out gray zone hybrid warfare in Britain, without anyone either noticing or caring; even after Litvinenko’s assassination in a Mayfair Hotel, in public and in broad daylight. And that was in 2006. We are still wringing our hands over the legal technicalities over what to do with ‘frozen’ Russian assets in Britain. Our problem is – we keep electing the wrong people.
Notice that this analysis would stand, whatever its ideological background credentials may be – left or right (the absurd demands of ideological perfection is what bedevils the left).
Thanks, John.
I hear you.