Marxist writer David Harvey notes that even Warren Buffett acknowledges the neoliberal era is marked by a one-sided class war, waged only by the capitalists. (“Sure there is class war, and it is my class, the rich, who are making it and we are winning,” Buffett has said.) The left lies sputtering on the mat, unable to maintain its ground, much less make any material gains. It’s hard to disagree when our gestures lack bite and our political parties—and most of our unions—are feckless at best, and capitalist quislings at worst. Whether it takes the form of insular campus activism, reactionary internet sermonizing, or impotent calls for general action, what passes for “the left” today is both parochial and completely disconnected from power. To put it bluntly, we have lost; we are decimated and we are feeble. What’s worse, we refuse to admit our failures, repeating them over and over and over again, castigating anyone who might question this pattern. In “Exiting the Vampire Castle,” Fisher alerted us to a “witch-hunting moralism”—in this case, against anyone who might try to raise class consciousness—that inevitably devolves into guilt and ineffectuality. In the wake of the election, it’s a lesson that seems to have gone largely unlearned by a self-sabotaging left.
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