Overview of debates over collective identity and their strategic implications

Marc Saxer

Declaration of Intent. This overview aims to kick off the debate over one of the major fields where the future of democracy will be defined. To write in an authentic voice, I do not hide my European perspective and progressive values. The objective of this text, however, is to structure the debate, not to take any position in it. Discussants are encouraged to use this starting point as a frame of reference, but formulate positions from their own perspective. Serving as an open source working paper for the Disrupt Democracy project, this document may be modified to include new aspects and differing viewpoints.

Brexit. Trump. Le Pen. Right wing populists lead the revolt against “globalism”. Armed with powerful identity narratives, they seek to define who ‘we’ are in nativist, nationalist or even racist terms. Progressives, on the other hand, seem hard pressed to offer any powerful collective identity narrative for the society as a whole.

At first glance, this may be a bit surprising, given the prominence of identity politics in recent years. “Black lives matter” offers a racial empowerment narrative, the LGBT movement a queer identity. Feminists debate if they have abandoned their egalitarian agenda for the sake of identity symbolism. On the material Left, questions of class consciousness may now be out of fashion. But the old labour movement knew how to build a lifeworld out of myths, symbols, rituals and institutions.

Progressives have been much less successful in formulating what exactly constitutes “We, the People”. Many prefer to cede this sensitive terrain to the Right. Rationalists often overlook the universal human need for connectedness and security. Internationalists condemn the yearning for the national shelter in the storms of globalization. Materialists dismiss identity struggles as “secondary fronts”. Accordingly, the seduction of the “Trumpenproletariat” by the far right was explained away as another case of “false consciousness”.

Why is a progressive collective identity needed?

The luxury of blissful ignorance, however, is no longer possible. Today, the political conflict over the free flow of people, goods, capital and ideas has reached a toxic boiling point. The debate has become so polarised between those who accuse the “globalist establishment to sell out the nation” and those who deem all open door critics as “racist, xenophobic deplorables” that it becomes ever more difficult to tackle the actual policy challenges at hand. With immigration issues, in particular, being at the centre of the political conflict, right wing populists find fertile soil to mobilise the material and cultural losers of globalisation. Right wing populists offer a platform for all those who feel “not heard” in corporate dominated post-democracies, “not included” by the post-industrial capitalist economy and “not recognised” by the pluralist society in general, and the libertarian establishment in particular. Brexit and the Trump election should be understood as reminders of what damage can be done when right wing populists are allowed to weaponise this anger for their own political agenda. Diffusion of this rage has become a matter of democracy’s survival.

The debate over immigration, in particular, has become the symbolic crystallisation point of deeper conflicts: identity, distribution and sovereignty.

Reason 1: Identity

The most immediate backlash against immigration comes from the far Right. For right wing extremists, the people are literally made out of the flesh and blood of its members. Therefore, they are terrified that the inflow of millions of immigrants with “different blood” will “impurify” the body politic. It is this existential fear, which drives right wing conspiracy theories of “Muslivasion”, “Le Grand Replacement”, and “Umvolkung”. It is this Social Darwinist angst, which exaggerates legitimate concerns over sexual violence by immigrants into hysterical paranoia over “Rapefugees”. Not all ring wingers are biological racists. The “Identitären” movement, the European version of the American Alt-Right, insists that they do not reject the foreign per se, but simply seek to separate irreconcilable cultures into clearly delineated spaces. But even these cultural essentialists are afraid that mass immigration could lead to “civilisational suicide”.

Liberals, fearful of the collapse of the human rights-based liberal order, defend the open door for refugees as a humanitarian duty. The Left, terrified that any admission of the risks of immigration could open the door to hostility against migrants, clings to the narrative that immigration is beneficial for all. However, as political scientists Sergi Pardos-Prado and Jordi Muñoz have shown, where all mainstream parties are pro-immigration, exclusionary nationalism surges in popularity. Fearing cosmopolitan dreams of global citizenship and the multicultural society as existential threats, many voters seem to seek shelter with the Right.

Conflicts over immigration are only one battle in a larger culture war over identity. Our societies are undergoing one of the greatest transformations of all time. Technological innovation, economic disruption and social change shake up old certainties, and transvalue traditional values. Sociologist Robert Putnam explains how social transformation erodes traditional communities of meaning, which used to give security and provide a sense of purpose. While many embrace this change as opportunity, others feel their identities are being threatened.

Over the past decades, identity issues held the centre stage while distribution was not on the agenda. The neoliberal deal essentially traded material dispossession for cultural assertion of minority groups. Consequently, we saw an increase in socio-economic inequality, but substantial progress in the recognition of female, queer and ethnic identities.

Today, right wing populists claim to fight what they call “minority privilege gone mad”. Its intellectual avant-garde, the Alt-right, aims at restoring governability (order and control) of an increasingly complex world by homogenising society. What this “privileging one’s own over the foreign” really means is, of course, the restoration of a white, heterosexual, and patriarchal society through the aggressive exclusion of everyone, who can be blamed for alienation from modern society. As German political scientist, Christian Volk points out, this aggressive anti-pluralism, which defames all dissenting voices as treason against the “people” also serves the strategic interest of right wing populists and masks their own vested interests. Be this as it may, in the vertigo of change, the right wing populist narrative is attractive to all those who yearn for security in a world seemingly out of control, search for identity where traditional communities are under pressure, and desire (false) certainties where uncertainty grows.

To save democracy from looming authoritarianism, progressives need to provide shelter for those who feel lost in the vertigo of change. How such progressive patriotism could look like, however, is the subject of heated debates. What exactly constitutes “The People” (Debate 1)? Should the Left try to wrestle back the “Nation” from the Right, or should it stay away from this loaded term (Debate 2)?

Do strong identities demand clear demarcations between ‘us’ and the “Other” (Debate 4)? Should progressives yield to the longing for homogeneity or celebrate diversity? What is our relationship to minorities who live within our societies? Is our ideal society multi-cultural or do we need a leading culture (Debate 5)? What is the right balance between diversity and social cohesion? How can progressives promote unity (Debate 6)?

Reason 2: Distribution

As the toxic political conflicts over immigration and refugees show, the solidarity between members of the human species is not without its limits. Individuals tend to be supportive only of those “others” they accept as fellow members of a community of solidarity. This means the question of “who belongs” and “who does not belong” to the community of solidarity is at the centre of the political conflict. In a welfare state, belonging to the community of solidarity, or not, equates to having drawing rights for public goods. Hence, where the boundary of the ‘in-group’ is drawn has far-reaching consequences for those who are left out. If solidarity is not universal, where exactly do we draw these boundaries? Who does and does not belong to The People (Debate 7)? Who are we in solidarity with? Where does our solidarity end? And who has drawing rights within the welfare state? Is it necessary, with a view to the legitimacy of the redistribution system, to limit the influx of new immigrants (Debate 8)?

Again, the conflict over immigration is only one battlefield in a larger conflict. In our “societies of social decline” (Oliver Nachtwey), the question of distribution returns to the political conflict’s centre stage. Automation and globalisation have led to deindustrialised “rust belts”, where people feel economically left behind. Where communities disintegrate, individuals are shut out from social life and feel deprived of their dignity. Fear, frustration and indignation are fertile ground for the far right. Right wing populists have reframed the distributional conflict as a cultural conflict between the nativist ‘us’ and the immigrant ‘them’. Scapegoating an identifiable “other” seems to be attractive with those who were deprived of their livelihoods by the anonymous forces of global capitalism, but cannot explain what is happening and what needs to be done.

These distributional conflicts may dwarfed by what is to come once the digital revolution starts to automate middle class jobs. Those who contribute to general welfare with their work are, under the existing social compact, entitled to social solidarity. When increasingly fewer people find income generating work, the social contract is bound to erode even further. This means our entire solidarity system needs to be put onto a new political foundation. Current debates over universal basic income schemes are just a prelude to the debates we need. Therefore, progressives need to clarify the basis on which it seeks to organise (re-)distribution (Debate 8).

When the question of distribution returns vigorously, conflicts are bound to flare up. This poses new questions over the state of our (post) democracies. What is the relationship between majorities and minorities? How can we prevent bitter conflicts from turning into enmity (Debate 3)?

Reason 3: Sovereignty

The right wing populist battle cry to “take back control” is essentially a call for self-assertion, which resonates widely across the political spectrum. Many agree that it is high time to defend livelihoods, ways of life, values, and communities against the anonymous forces of globalisation, which seem to rip them apart. The fear of losing control is aggravated where people feel that their voices are no longer heard in corporate dominated “post-democracies”. While progressive populism is largely directed against economic exploitation, right wing populists have combined the struggle against the forces of global capitalism with a rejection of cultural alienation. For all those who feel threatened by social decline and adrift on the white waters of globalisation, right wing populists offer an identity anchor.

Closely related to the discussion over the boundaries of solidarity, there is a debate over the borders of the body politic. It is not a coincidence that the revolt against globalism brings the question of borders back into the centre of the political conflict. Trump’s wall and Merkel’s Fortress Europe refugee deal with Turkey are significant reversals of decades of open door policies. Should progressives defend open borders, or advocate for closing them? Where are Europe’s borders (Debate 9)? And how should we define our relationship to those who live beyond these borders (Debate 3)?

These questions are right at the centre of the Left’s strategic dilemma. While redistribution works better between members of tightly-knit communities, the resources to be redistributed must be won in the struggle with capitalism, which operates entirely on a global plane. Again, the call “to take back control” lies right at the heart of the strategic debate. Where to stage the struggle against the destructive forces of global capitalism? Is national sovereignty still possible in a globalised world? Is it actually something progressives should strive for at all (Debate 7). Should progressives retreat into what is left of the nation state, or build international movements which can take on global capitalism on its very own playing field (Debate 10)? Is it better to build broad societal alliance, or focus on mobilising the purists (Debate 11)?

In sum, some of the major conflict of our time are directly or indirectly connected to questions of collective identity. In order to stem back the right wing populist tide, and shape the great transformation under way, progressives need to provide identity narratives which can give shelter, meaning, purpose, connectedness, and a sense of belonging. How such a progressive patriotism could look like, however, is subject to controversial debates.

The Debates: Controversial Positions and their strategic implications

How these questions raised are answered will have far reaching consequences for a wide range of issues. Those who seek to build a broad societal alliance around identity narratives need to be keenly aware of the discourse landscape. In the following, I try to give a quick overview of these debates, and seek to draw attention to the strategic implications of the respective positions.

Who are “We, the People”?

Ever since the American and French revolutions, “We, the People” constituted the democratic sovereign. But who constituted the people? And who could become a citizen of the republic? The answers to these questions are closely related to the way “the people” is constructed. In nation states, “the people” is connected to the idea of nationhood, such as some bond which binds millions of people who have never met together into an imagined community (Benedict Anderson). The nation, however, could be constructed in very different ways. Inclusionary nations are marked by everyone living in a given territory, no matter their place of birth, ethnic heritage, religious faith, sexual orientation or political convictions. Exclusionary nationalism, on the other hand, establishes different criteria as to who belongs and does not belong to the nation. These criteria often evolve around notions of biological origin, ethnic heritage, or religious allegiance. In its most extreme interpretations, this means millions of immigrants living for decades in the community have no prospect of ever becoming citizens, while millions of others living as the diaspora are considered members of the nation, even if they have never set foot in the country. Between these extremes, concepts of the political nation tried to establish non-deterministic criteria, which allowed others to become citizens. In the democratic tradition from the Greek polis to the Enlightenment republic, the people could be defined as all those who have the political will to enter a social contract.

Debate 1: Are rational principles enough to form a community, or is some emotional bond needed?

Different from dispositional and structuralist approaches, we shall assume that collective identities are neither given nor static, but constructed, maintained and transformed by joint action, negotiation and interpretation. Pragmatists follow from this that any narrative can be used to construct a sense of identity. Jürgen Habermas seeks to construct a post-national European identity free from “archaic passions” of nationalism. His constitutional patriotism is built around rationalist principles, such as the basic rights and principles of the liberal order. Habermas patriotism is strategic: he is afraid that national political communities only provide weak legitimacy for universal human rights. As David Held argued, human rights need the consent and support of the democratic sovereign. This is why neo-Kantians develop a cosmopolitan political community as the foundation for global citizenship and human rights.

Chantal Mouffe disagrees with such “naïve academic exercises”. Citing Sigmund Freud’s work on affective libidinal bonds in processes of identification, she defines collective identity as the “result of a passionate affective investment that creates a strong identification amongst the members of a community”. Thus, collective identities cannot arbitrarily be constructed around bloodless rationalist principles, but they need to invoke precisely those “archaic passions” Habermas tried to sterilize. In other words, when constructing a collective identity, we need to work with, and not against, human nature. Marxists and Communitarians, concerned about the alienation of atomized individuals in modern societies, have long made similar calls.

The notion of affectionate identification is useful to explain why the concept of the nation was so successful. American psychologist Michael J. Bader deciphers the nation as a metaphor for a family. Therefore, patriotism represents the fulfilment of our longings for connectedness, safety, attachment, and recognition. Benedict Anderson explains that the nation creates deep attachments of fraternity, which made possible enormous sacrifices. For Ernest Gellner, the idea that the nation and the state should be congruent evokes strong emotions; anger if this principle is violated, and satisfaction if it is fulfilled. These “hot” emotions (Bryan Turner) help to explain why the idea of the nation is so popular around the world. This seems to be particularly true for the construct of the “ethnic nation”, e.g. the imagination of the nation as an ethically and culturally homogeneous population, bound together by common language, common origins and common heritage. The appeal to myths, legends and shared experiences evokes emotions of love, pride, loyalty, affection and a sense of belonging.

However, given the bloody historical record of the “ethnic nation”, progressives try to stay away from this concept. It is, therefore, important to study how multi-ethnic states construct their national identity. The Swiss trace the origin of their nation back to the ‘Rütlischwur’, the legendary founding act of the Swiss confederation. The United States is emotionally grounded in both the independence struggle as well as the constituting act. Israeli identity is deeply intertwined with the collective memory of the Shoah. Indians treasure their shared experience of the independence struggle as a source of pride. It is important to heed the lesson that multi-ethnic nations are by no means cold rationalist constructs, but draw on foundational myths and historical experiences as sources of emotional identification.

Postcolonial societies often do not share European wariness of nationalism. Indian publicist Pankaj Mishra speaks for many when he positively understands mass nationalism as the source of liberation movements. Echoing Max Weber, development thinkers have identified strong collective identities, such as the nation, as the binding force which allows societies to embrace radical change. A higher purpose which transcends the individual, so the argument goes, allows the people to endure the hardships of transformation. In modern India, a culture war is raging over the true meaning of the nation. Hindu nationalists claim that while Pakistan succeeded to build a Muslim nation, India failed to become a Hindu state. Advocates of the politics of Hindu-Hindi-Hindutva, like Guru Golwalkar, promote a uniform nation with Hindi as the national language, Hinduism as the national religion and Hindutva as the national way of life. Amartya Sen, a secular intellectual, has countered that such uniformity flies in the face of the argumentative Indian culture. Social scientist turned politician Yogendra Yadav insists that India’s heterogeneous founding fathers agreed that uniting the plurality of Indian nations, ethnicities, religions, castes, and tribes required the rejection of uniformity. Accepting that political boundaries do not need to coincide with cultural boundaries, he believes the Indian ‘state nation’ has found a model to democratically deal with deep diversities. Perry Anderson has deconstructed such liberal depiction of India’s past and present realities as the Indian ideology. Nonetheless, similar to the United States, “unity in diversity” is a staple belief in India’s mainstream intellectual community.

Affective identification is precisely what the European Union (EU) is lacking. Instead of promoting a European nation rooted in myths, symbols, rituals and institutions, the EU remains an emotionally cold bureaucratic machinery. Richard Rorty understood this need for affectionate identification, and rooted his pragmatic patriotism in American exceptionalism. For Europe, given its history of imperialism, such a “mission civilisatrice” may not be the right narrative. Echoing Habermas, Francis Fukuyama suggests to root European identity in the loyalty to constitutional principles.

Simply Europeanising constitutional patriotism, however, may not be enough to evoke affective identification with Europe. What is needed is an emotional foundation for the European nation. Grassroots movements like the “Pulse of Europe” movement understand this and stress less a detailed reform agenda but an emotional bond to Europe. The European nation would both cater to the fears of loss of control and sovereignty, as well as the basic human needs to belong, connect, identify and to be grounded. Such an affective identity could be the way to win back the angry and fearful supporters of right wing populists.

Slavoj Žižek appeals to the pride over the achievements of modernity as a source of affectionate identification with Europe. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, sociologist Kate Nash has observed a “cosmopolitan patriotism”, which uses the pride citizens feel about helping others beyond their border to heighten national feelings. This is in line with her observation of the emergence of emotionally “warm popular cosmopolitanism”. Nash describes as an extension of, rather than in opposition to, national feelings of belonging. In other words, in certain moments, the feelings that bring together nations are not limited to fellow nationals, but can extend universally to all humans who feel the same way. This popular cosmopolitanism, which is rooted in the hot emotions of national belonging tempered by universal humanist sympathy could form the basis for the European nation, not defined by its common heritage or common destiny, but as a common project. However, Nash warns that popular cosmopolitanism has been used to justify humanitarian interventions by military means because opposed to Neo-Kantian cosmopolitanism which morally obligates to help all human suffering, it makes violence in the name of doing good feel right.

Constructing progressive patriotism is a notable challenge. On the one hand, collective identities cannot be bloodless constructs, but need to offer emotional identification. On the other hand, tapping into the nation’s libidinal energy could open the Pandora’s box of nationalist extremism. In order to tackle this dilemma, efforts are being made to replace the emotionally cold constitutional patriotism with a warm popular cosmopolitanism.

Debate 2: The Nation. Is there a good nationalism? Or should we divorce progressive patriotism from the nation?

On the other side of the spectrum, Left nationalists from the Scottish National Party to the Spanish Podemos, as well as self-declared ‘non-ideological movements’ like the French Nuit débout to the Italian Movimento 5 Stelle try to tap into the libidinal power of the nation. Populists need to find a common narrative which can bind together their heterogeneous 99 percent alliance. The nation can be the common platform for a broad coalition between groups with different interests and priorities. Left nationalism promises to overcome the collective action problems of the tribalized Left by bridging all divides through a common national identity. In order to achieve this strategic goal, Left nationalists aim to wrestle the nation back from the Right. Different from the nativist right, which defines the People in opposition to the immigrant other, Alan Johnson argues that the Left defines the People in opposition to the powerful neoliberal elites.

Proponents of this “civic nationalism”, just as their antipodes, the “human rights cosmopolitans”, claim Immanuel Kant as their patron. Cosmopolitan economist Dani Rodrik advocates for the responsible national citoyen as the antidote against the unaccountable cosmopolitanism of global citizens. Economist Larry Summers calls for “responsible nationalism” over “reflex globalism” which pursues citizens economic welfare as a primary objective. British writer David Goodhart sees “moderate nationalism” as a benign force reinforcing the common interests and welfare states against the disintegrating effects of affluence, individualism and diversity.

The Scottish National Party’s (SNP) has been electorally successful with its version of inclusive nationalism. For the SNP, everyone who lives in Scotland is a Scot, no matter where he or she comes from. Scottish nationalism is supposed to be progressive and open — seeking to assure the wellbeing of all citizens to lay the foundation for a global Scotland. German chancellor Angela Merkel, to the dismay of the conservatives in her Christian Democratic party, has recently introduced this inclusive “territorial” nationalism as the foundation of a new German patriotism.

For many on the European Left, the term nation may be too loaded with historical baggage and current racist vitriol to reclaim it. Accordingly, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan likened Scottish nationalism to racism and religious intolerance. Columnist Claire Heuchan is afraid that any politics of division between ‘us’ versus ‘them’ invariably leads to the exclusion of migrants and minorities.

This points right to one of the key strategic dilemmas of the Left. On the one hand, the emotional energy of the nation could be useful to mobilise for the struggle against the international forces of capital. However, it is precisely the internationalist heritage of the Left, which make the use of nationalism in any form unacceptable to many. In other words, Left nationalism may attract some new allies for the struggle, but at the same time alienate parts of its own base. While the jury is still out, this seems to be happening with Corbyn’s Labour Party in the United Kingdom and Sahra Wagenknecht’s Left Party in Germany.

For many Germans, even such an inclusive nationalism is still suspect. In an attempt to immunise society against the temptations of extreme nationalism, a “culture of remembrance” is instituted. Accordingly, former President of the German Parliament Wolfgang Thierse defines Germany as a “community of remembrance”. And remembering the Holocaust, former President Joachim Gauck agrees with President of Central Council of Jews Charlotte Knobloch, is part of the German raison d’état.

German Green politician Robert Habeck suggests to divorce patriotism from the nation. Citing Habermas, the nation is neither understood as a common heritage nor as a common destiny, but as a rational social contract. To allow for affective identification, Habeck seeks to garnish the rational contract with the pathos of a common bond. Such a progressive patriotism, Habeck insinuates, can be used as the foundation for a common project of change.

But how can such progressive patriotism look like? Psychologist Michael Bader asserts that patriotism, as a means to satisfy the universal human need to be connected and secure, is neither left nor right. What makes it progressive, then, is the way how the need for connectedness and security is framed in the discourse. Linguist George Lakoff identifies two universal frames: the “Strict Father”, which stresses discipline and self-reliance, and the “Nurturant Parent”, which values empathy and responsibility for others. The essence of progressive patriotism is then the responsibility of everyone to strengthen the community of solidarity. And in return, the solidarity of all members with each other strengthens the identification with the community. Caring for others, protecting each other against threats from outside or within, can be a source of pride. This is what American political scientist Mark Lilla has in mind when he speaks about a “nation of citizens who are in this together and must help one another”. A progressive patriotism, Michael Lerner argues, should therefore recognize human desire for connectedness and security, condemn those institutions that frustrate them, and struggle for changes which enable their satisfaction.

In sum, attempts are made to tap into the emotional bond of the nation, but isolate progressive patriotism against the temptations of extreme nationalism. Are popular cosmopolitanism and responsible nationalism viable concepts? How to define them more precisely? Which concept can be the basis for progressive patriotism?

What is the relationship between ‘us’ and ‘them’?

Anthropologists point out that to survive, the human animal needs group cohesion, and to enable collective action, humans need to understand each other as part of a collective. Henry Staten asserts that any collective identity needs a constitutive outside. This means that the ‘we’ can only exist through the formulation of the ‘they’. Collective identity construction, therefore, is a process of asserting a difference between ‘us’ and ‘the other’, and drawing a frontier between the interior and the exterior.

Debate 3: Democracy. Does the relationship between ‘us’ and ‘them’ have to be antagonistic?

The war against the democratic institutions waged by the Trump administration target the normative foundations of the pluralistic society: acceptance of rules, readiness to compromise, recognition of commonly accepted truths and the willingness to embrace dissenters not as the enemy, but a compatriot, who competes over the best way to further the common good. Why do so many people support the destruction of checks and balances in the United States, Hungary and Poland, and who do they seek to tear down the EU? Because these institutions stand in the way of the strong man saviour, and hamper his ability to single handily alleviate them from their grievances. The rule of law, democratic checks and balances, freedom of speech and scientific evidence are dismissed as red tape suffocating the nation. The institutions are equated with the debasing status quo. This sentiment is shared by Left populists, who reduce the entire European integration project to the neoliberal policies promoted by Brussels. Ironically, right wing populists are hell-bent to double down on these neoliberal policies, and now seek to do away with the last remaining checks on their power to implement them. In order to establish a populist direct relationship between the leader and the people, Kerstin Kohlenberg et al argue, Trump needs to destroy the institutions, which allow debate, truth seeking, compromise and tolerance. Taking a page from the ancient playbook of divide and rule, right wing populists split the people into a self-righteous ‘us’ and a demonized ‘them’.

Excluding others enhances the sense of belonging to a group. Michael Bader argues that demonizing others as “bad” or “dangerous” makes those on the inside feel good, righteous and safe. Being anti-trade, anti-immigration or anti-Europe strengthens the collective identity of being American, British or French. Antagonism, in other words, is a powerful ruling technique.

Chantal Mouffe famously asked: if collective identities are always constructed on the mode of we/they, how can we avoid this relation becoming one of enmity? The question, then, is what is the true nature of political competition? For Carl Schmitt, the nature of the political is antagonistic. If the political opponent is perceived as the enemy, however, the door is open for his destruction. Antagonism, it seems, is the path toward an authoritarian regime.

Mouffe suggests to use the agonism model instead. Agonism uses an outside to construct a collective identity, but refrains from defining this actor as the enemy. Agonism describes the relationship between ‘us’ and ‘them’ as a struggle over hegemony where the “other” is accepted as a legitimate competitor. The ability to develop and maintain a nonviolent mode of political competition is crucial for the survival of democracy.

Is antagonism a necessary tool to break open the closed political space, or the path to an authoritarian regime? How to hedge the human need for a constitutive outside and turn it into healthy competition?

Debate 4: Do clear demarcations between ‘us’ and ‘them’ make strong collective identities, or do they open the door for discrimination against “the other”?

Defining the ‘us’ in opposition to ‘them’ can be a slippery slope towards racism. When people are defined by identity markers, these very categories can be abused to discriminate against them. How serious these concerns are can be seen in the wave of police brutality against the African-American minority in the United States, or the attacks on refugee shelters in Germany. The liberal antidote is tolerance and openness: Every one may be happy in his own fashion. Multiculturalists go one step further and embrace diversity as a value in itself. Ironically, the precondition of the “colourful republic” is to be colour-blind.

Critics warn that this political correctness blinds us from analysing social problems thoroughly. Slavoj Žižek accuses proponents of political correctness to seek social change without social change. Political correct language, he asserts, obscures real issues instead of trying to solve them.

Critics of the multicultural society draw attention to the infiltration with jihadist networks. Accordingly, the political debate in the United States and Germany crystallizes around racial profiling as a means for crowd policing.

Slavoj Žižek uses the outside as a constitutional element of his European identity. He aggressively asserts the difference between the universalist culture of Enlightenment, and the Muslim world, which refuses to ignore its particular religious background. To be European in that sense means to be able to ignore one’s particulars, and be part of the universality of humanity. Postcolonialist critics like Hamid Dabashi have likened this position to orientalism. He warns that such Eurocentric ‘us’ versus ‘them’ thinking will blind Europeans to the assertion of a non-European world of ideas. Taking aim at Samuel Huntington, Amartya Sen warns that it is sectarian fundamentalists, who benefit the most from such cultural essentialism. By dividing the world into monolithic cultural spheres, civilizational partitioners involuntarily justify the rejection of universalist human rights as the imposition of foreign (Western) values.

Is the clear opposition towards a constitutive outside the way to construct powerful identity narratives, or does this path lead to the clash between civilisations?

Debate 5: Multiculturalism or Leading Culture. What is our relationship to the “other within”?

In their long march to emancipation, minority movements have shifted their aims and strategies. The labour movement and the civic rights movement s le by Martin Luther King demanded to be treated identically to the dominant group in society. Lately, most identity movements demanded respect for being different. Francis Fukuyama sees this shift occur after 1968, when the overall focus of the Left moved from external (material and legal) conditions towards the authentic inner self. Today, writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Black Lives Matter movement insist that the traditions and consciousness, histories and lived experiences of black people differ so fundamentally that there is a gulf of understanding which cannot be bridged. The political consequence is to demand a higher awareness for the particular vulnerability of minority groups (e.g. policy brutality) exemptions from general rules (e.g. for Muslim girls from school swimming lessons) and measures designed to increase the visibility of minority groups as well as increase the representativeness of institutions both in the public as well as the private sector. Equality cannot be achieved by equal chances, but needs affirmative action to offset discriminatory practices which still undermine the advancement of individuals. These measures have been fiercely attacked from the Right as “special privileges”. From a liberal perspective, questions are raised if “group rights” awarded upon the belonging to an identity community are undermining the constitutional order based on universal rights. More profoundly, how does the assumption that people are inherently different square with the Enlightenment belief that all humans are equal?

Multiculturalism, the political program that sought to value each separate culture equally, posed the greatest challenge to the Left. Tolerance and respect for particular cultures are the cornerstone of pluralist democratic societies. However, what happens if equality among humans clashes with equality among cultures (insofar as some cultures neglect equality)? What happens if a particular culture is incompatible with human rights? In concrete terms, should the majority society have to tolerate particular cultural norms like honour killings, kosher butchering, forced marriages or the segregation of women? Slavoj Žižek decidedly rejects the “multiculturalist, anti-colonialist defence of the multiplicity of ways of life [as] false: it covers up the antagonisms within each of these particular ways of life, justifying acts of brutality, sexism and racism as expressions of a particular culture that we have no right to judge by foreign Western values”. Within society, Žižek embraces Enlightenment values as the European Leitkultur, which implies a higher leading culture that regulates the way in which the subcultures interact. Moral philosopher Susan Neiman seconds that in order to strengthen social cohesion, common values are needed. To her, the erosion of this moral foundation in the neoliberal age can explain the strange fascination of fundamentalist terrorism to well-educated middle class idealist looking for meaning. Margaret Thatcher famously summed up this individualist extremism with her assertion that “There is no such thing as society”. David Goodhart worries that an ideology which describes societies as a random collection of individuals cannot work. A functioning society is based on habits of cooperation and trust. These habits are best produced by bonds of language, history and culture. This is why Goodhart worries that if a critical mass of immigrants rejects common norms, the idea of a people will fracture. Accordingly, he suggests that diversity and individualism need to be checked where they undermine group attachment, and the counter the need to be valued and belong.

Of course, the ‘leading culture’ has long been promoted by conservatives. It has widely been criticised for promoting a majoritarian morality over minority rights. How quickly this “privileging the own over the foreign” can turn into racist, xenophobic, sexist and homophobic vitriol could be witnessed in the Trump and Brexit campaigns. Sociologist Hans Joas dismisses the need for common values. To him, social cohesion grows from the feeling of every one to be heard, and a prevailing sense of justice.

These debates are highly relevant for the “others within”, namely the millions of immigrants living in Europe already, and those who seek to come. In many European countries, clear rules and regulations for immigration are missing. Therefore, the human right to asylum is heavily abused as a loophole for immigrants. Any meaningful debate over immigration policy must start with the question of the possible status immigrants can aspire to when they have to jump through all the hoops of the integration process. Liberals argue that democracies cannot survive if they permanently relegate some of their residents to second class status. Consequently, temporary shelter is only on option for a small contingent of asylum seekers. For all the others, the final status cannot be anything less than full membership of the community of solidarity. Canadian historian John Ralston Saul argues that it is the prospect of becoming full members of the nation, which furthers integration.

If immigration is a process to be shaped in progressive terms, some sort of normative goal needs to be formulated. In this spirit, in Germany, a commission has been set up to deliberate over a “Leitbild”, e.g. the guiding model for the “open society”. In its essence, it defines integration as a two way street: the willingness of migrants to integrate, and the provision of full capabilities to do so by the host society.

What happens, however, if those who already live in our communities break the rules, or are suspected to do so? After the terror attack in Berlin, the debate in Germany questioned if the right of residence should be revoked for terrorist suspects or hate preachers. How to balance public safety with the presumption of innocence? Social peace with the freedom of speech and religion? In France, after a series of terrorist attacks, the revocation of citizenship has been proposed. Is this compatible with an understanding of citizenship as an inalienable right?

What is the right balance between the democratic will of the majority, and the inalienable rights of minorities? Where are the boundaries of majoritarian morality? What are the norms particular subcultures have to adhere to?

Debate 6: Open Society: Does unity require “sameness”, or can we find strength in diversity?

Modernization brings about economic complexity, social differentiation and a plurality of lifeworlds. As a result, modern societies are marred with conflicts over material distribution and cultural recognition. Moral psychologist Karen Stenner has warned that the perception of conflict and chaos can activate predisposed authoritarians. Authoritarians seek to remedy the alleged normative threat to the integrity of the moral order, which they do by kicking out non-members of the community and non-conformists to the group consensus.

In order to soothe the nerves of latent authoritarians, would it help to stress the unity of the community? Communitarians argue that such a uniting narrative needs to move beyond the multiculturalist coexistence in parallel societies, but instead emphasize the communality of the ‘us’.

Critics like Amartya Sen accuse communitarians of cultural relativism designed to protect socially conservative values like gender inequality or cultural practices like stoning or honour killings. By reducing the plurality of associations and affiliations of each human being to the alleged primacy of the community, he accuses communitarians to open the gates for communal politics designed to segregate societies into parallel communities with their own norms, values and practices.

Cosmopolitans, on the other hand, seek to reflect the plurality of modern societies by recognizing diversity as a strength, not as a weakness (e pluribus unum). Michelle Obama recently offered a “united in diversity” narrative: “America’s greatness comes from recognizing the innate dignity and worth of all our people […] this country is big enough to have a place for us all — men and women, folks of every background and walk of life — and that each of us is a precious part of this great American story, and we are always stronger together.”

The debate now concentrates on the right balance between diversity and social cohesion. Mark Lilla acknowledges that in the past, celebrating differences was a unifying force of governance. But he warns that “liberal moral panic about racial, gender and sexual identity” has distorted this message. In order to “capture the imaginations about our shared destiny”, he suggests that a “post identity liberalism” must concentrate not on difference but on commonality. Critics like German journalist Marie Schmidt, on the other hand, have warned against playing different forms of discrimination against each other. Questions of identity, she reminds us, are always also questions of class. To reduce identity politics to declarative symbolism is to miss the point. What matters is the distribution of capabilities to do what we want to do. And as education researcher Peggy McIntosh has shown, privileges are distributed unevenly between members of different identity groups.

There seems to be a consensus that amidst the conflicts of transformation, social cohesion needs to be strengthened. To promote unity, Communitarians seek to tone down identity politics, and emphasize more on communalities. Cosmopolitans, on the other hand, celebrate diversity as strength, and seek to build unity out of participation and inclusion. Are critics right to call for a reversal of the excesses of both approaches? What is the best way to promote social cohesion?

Debate 7: Hybrid Identities: Shall we aspire to be cosmopolitan “citizens of the world”, or do we need the communitarian roots of national identity?

David Goodhart identifies the divide between well educated, highly mobile “Anywheres” who value fluidity and autonomy versus the more rooted, less educated “Somewheres” who prioritize group attachment and security as the central political conflict of our time. From Brexit to the Trump insurgency, societies were divided between the highly skilled urbanites who value freedom and movement, and embrace diversity as an enrichment, and the lower skilled peripherals who rarely work abroad and face competition from immigrants. German sociologist Andreas Reckwitz roots these new social class divide in the emergence of the knowledge economy. While the “socio-cultural professionals” of the new middle class do not necessarily do better in economic turns (in fact many are part of the “cultural precariat”), their high cultural capital (Pierre Bourdieu) gives them enormous discourse power to set their lifestyle as the social benchmark. The “old middle class” may still do well in material terms, but feels their values and lifestyles are no longer recognized. German political scientist Carsten Nickel believes this “extreme centre” (Tariq Ali) is no longer willing to negotiate with what it sees as the “racist, homophobic, sexist and xenophobic periphery” over the distribution of interest and recognition, and instead retreats into the lifeworld of their own tribe. It is this tribal logic what, according to Nickel, drives political polarisation and cultural conflicts. Institution traditionally engaged in the renegotiation of class compromises, such as the German popular parties, are no longer in a position to do so, leaving the social revolt against the liberal paradigm dangerously unchecked.

American sociologist Talcott Parsons draws the line between those with an “achieved identity”, e.g. based on one’s own educational and professional success, and “ascribed identities” rooted in gender, ethnicity, and places. He suggests that those with fixed identities have a much harder time to adapt to rapid change. The polarisation over issues from sovereignty to security, from border control to immigration mirrors a value divide between cosmopolitans and communitarians.

Cosmopolitans feel enriched by the ability to be part of multiple communities, from the local neighbourhood to the global plane. They can feel like Londoners, English, Brits, Europeans and citizens of the world at the same time. Cosmopolitans seek to replace, or at least supplement, their national identities, and become global citizens. For liberals, the universalist idea of a world composed of autonomous individuals interacting in the global marketplace is a utilitarian dream. In a world of global challenges from climate change to terrorism, global citizens who worry about the global commons are needed.

Communitarians feel alienated from the plastic worlds of global consumerism, and seek to strengthen the bonds to their local communities. For them, unchecked individualism without the binding force of a common cultural identity is an atomistic dystopia. British Prime Minister Theresa May famously quipped that “If you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere.” The economist Dani Rodrik reminds us that citizenship is only meaningful within an established polity, such as a nation state. Being a citizen means to deliberate with other citizens in a shared political community and hold decision makers accountable. Global citizens, on the other hand, do not have similar right and responsibilities; no one is accountable to them, and they do not have to justify themselves to anyone. Rodrik reckons that in cases of conflict between the local residents’ welfare and the foreigners’ wellbeing, the cosmopolitan elites have too often shown disregard for their compatriots. For Paul Collier, global citizenship without national citizenship would be unviable. Without the binding force of nationhood, there could be no notion of the common good: “! Without a ‘we’, there is no ‘common’”.

More radical critics from the Left to the Right frame cosmopolitanism as the pretty façade of neoliberal globalism. They accuse the “aloof establishment” of selling out their compatriots. Political scientist Walter Benn Michaels laments that in their obsession with every difference, liberal Americans have forgotten the one that really matters: the difference between the rich and the poor. Against the background of the global revolt against globalism, this debate flares up again. German political scientists Dirk Jörke and Nils Heisterhagen attack the “anti-discrimination policies, diversity euphoria and political correct language” as the trademarks of a “mislead left elite world” which, “trapped in its minority identity politics”, has forgotten the common man on the street. Jonathan Haidt believes the way the globalist urban elites talk and act unwittingly activates authoritarian tendencies in a subset of nationalists. Historian Michael Lind worries that the abandonment of national patriotism by many elite citizens will weaken national unity and benefit racism, ethnocentrism and regionalism. German journalist Rainer Hank insinuates that the utter contempt the global elites show for the petty nationalism of their compatriots is one of the drivers of the revolt against the establishment. Swedish political scientist Bo Rothstein identifies the clash between this cosmopolitan agenda and the demands of the white working class as the reason for the split between two historical allies: “In general, the traditional working class favours protectionism, the re-establishment of a type of work that the development of technology inexorably has rendered outdated and production over environmental concerns; it is also a significant part of the basis for the recent surge in anti-immigrant and even xenophobic views. Support from the traditional working class for strengthening ethnic or sexual minorities’ rights is also pretty low. The intellectual-cultural Left is the exact opposite: these people are internationalists, free traders, environmentalists and strongly focused on supporting various minority groups’ rights via identity politics. And this group is positively disposed towards immigration and multiculturalism.”

The tension between identity and inequality has been at the centre of strategic debates on the Left for decades. It is therefore not without irony that the main propagator of the revolt against globalism, Trump consultant Steve Bannon, sounds like the leader of the working class when he rails against the “party of Davos”. In his now famous speech in the Vatican, Bannon criticised the “spiritual crisis of capitalism” and vowed to return the financial sector it to its legitimate function of serving the real economy.

Who is part, and who is not part of the solidarity community?

Debate 8: Boundaries within. Are there limits to solidarity and redistribution? And if so, does the influx of new immigrants have to be limited?

In its latest manifestation, the immigration debate rages over the entitlement of refugees to public goods. Angry natives ask “why refugees, illegal immigrants, or other outsiders get free stuff, and we don’t”. In other words, these critics do not consider migrants to be part of the social contract, and therefore, believe they are not be entitled to social benefits. This points right into the nexus of solidarity, redistribution and immigration. What full membership in the society means, such as what rights and duties members have, is determined by the social contract. This implies that who is and who is not considered a member of society will have far-reaching implications for the drawing rights the individual enjoys. In other words, those who define who is party to the social contract also determines where to draw the boundaries of solidarity.

Promoters of the universality of human rights demand that all human beings are treated equally. This means, questions of citizenship notwithstanding, no difference is to be made between the native and the migrant population. Accordingly, German courts have ordered to pay minimum wages to refugees.

Critics have pointed out that it is not a coincidence that the revolt against globalism focuses on the number of immigrants in a country. The sociologist Robert Putnam observed that a higher proportion of immigrants lowers the level of trust in a society, not only between the indigenous and immigrant population, but also within these groups. This means high levels of immigration weaken the social cohesion of nations. Paul Collier argues that the “mutual regard”, or solidarity with fellow citizens is a precondition for redistributive taxing. David Goodhart pointed to the tension between diversity and solidarity. As the political economist David Rueda has shown, the higher the share of immigrants, the lower is the willingness of the wealthy to pay redistributive taxes. Unlimited generosity may overstretch societal solidarity, and eventually undermine the legitimacy of the entire re-distributional system. This is why historian Michael Lind rejects “open border progressivism” for its unworkable combination of support for unrestricted immigration with a generous national welfare state. For him, the import of poorly paid, poorly educated workers is only a disguise for wage suppression and the defense of elite privilege, while curtailing mass low-wage immigration could actually help the working classes. Paul Collier concludes that right wing opposition against immigration is rational from the perspective of those who depend the most on social redistribution.

Warning against “immigration into the welfare system”, Left nationalists side with the native against the migrant working class in this distribution conflict. Accordingly, Jeremy Corbyn, in an attempt to win back disgruntled white workers, came out and opposed the free movement of European citizens. Sahra Wagenknecht and Oskar Lafontaine of the German Left Party sing a similar tune when they talk about revocation of the “right to hospitality” of asylum seekers. So far, however, this tactical opportunism seems to be less effective in attracting new voters than it is in alienating the progressive base.

Against this background, the debate over the limits of immigrations has started. Should there be caps for new immigrants? Can the host society select between those who seek to come, and if so, what are the criteria? David Goodhart argues that from the moral equality of all human beings does not follow the same obligation to all human beings. Accordingly, Paul Collier suggests that to fully integrate the already present immigrant communities, a ‘pause’ in new immigration is needed. Moral philosopher Michael Walzer proposed an “Immigration Deal”, which offered full membership to the solidarity community to existing residents of different legal status, in return for severe limitations of new arrivals. President Trump’s ban on Muslim immigration has put the conflict over immigration policy right at the center of American politics. A dozen cities, amongst them San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Boston and Portland, have declared themselves safe zones for illegal immigrants, and refuse to follow federal executives order to arrest and deport them as long as they do not break the law. While Californian lawmakers are discussing to declare the entire state a safe zone, President Trump threatens to cut off federal funding for the opponents of his policies. This again ties the question of immigration to the distribution of resources.

In societies of social decline, immigration has become one of the battlegrounds of the larger conflict over redistribution. Digital automation, one of the drivers of under- and unemployment, could make these distributional conflicts even more ferocious. The debate how to alleviate these conflicts have now started. Cutting across the ideological lines of the industrial age, Universal Basic Income schemes are promoted by a bizarre alliance of Silicon Valley techies who seek to boost consumption demand, Davos billionaires who fear the coming of the pitchforks, and some on the Left who embrace the leisure society as the historical chance to overcome the alienation of commodified work. Thyminan Bussemer, Christian Krell and Henning Meyer smell a Trojan horse, suspecting that the real purpose of basic income schemes is to away with existing package of social welfare, effectively eroding social solidarity, and leaving individuals to fend for themselves against life’s risks. Opponents fear the replacement of solidarity based welfare with naked redistribution will trade the common effort to enlarge the cake with cut-throat competition over the remaining cake slices. In the traditional social security system, workers can justify their claim for solidarity of the society with their contributions to the common good. In contrast, in systems where the claim to support is solely based on citizenship, every new citizen is seen as a competitor for a share of a shrinking cake. The toxic conflicts over immigration shows how quickly the competition between native and migrant recipients can turn xenophobic or even violent. In other words, the question who belongs to ’us’, and is therefore entitled to “stuff” becomes a driver of xenophobia and racism.

Debate 9: External Borders. Where is the frontier between the “inside” and the “outside”?

Many of the recent conflicts between European nations were about the boundaries of solidarity. In the Ukraine crisis, Eastern Europeans asked for solidarity, while Western European members were worried over the economic fall-out of sanctions against Russia. In the European sovereign debt crisis, Southern Europeans asked for solidarity, but their Northerners were unwilling to pay for transfers. In the refugee crisis, South and Central Europeans asked for solidarity, but many East Europeans were not willing to take in any migrants. In its essence, these conflicts are over the boundaries of solidarity between members, as well as between members and non-members of the European community.

The boundaries of solidarity cannot be defined without determining the final frontiers of Europe. It has been argued that the fiction of an ever-growing EU may have been helpful to pacify the neighbourhood with the promise of membership, but now it threatens to tear apart the existing union. This is not to say that the current union of 28 states is final. However, where to draw the borders between the inside and the outside? What will be the criteria to determine this final shape of Europe? Geographical criteria are not available. Do calls for a European identity justify to turn the European Union into a “Christian club”? This would exclude Bosnia and Albania. Is Europe still a peace project? This would indicate to consolidate the pacification of the Balkans by offering membership to all remaining states. Are geopolitical criteria the most relevant? Does this mean Moscow’s aggressive call for a buffer between Russia and the West and the end of the Eastward expansion should be accepted? Or should membership be restricted for liberal democracies only? Does the authoritarian rollback in Ankara then deal the final blow to Turkey’s membership bid? What happens then if the liberal democracy in a member state erodes or collapses?

The conflict over the boundaries of solidarity literally translates into the question of borders. Trump’s decision to create a wall against Mexican immigrants and the call to fortify European borders against refugees target the free movement of people. Wall and fences are supposed to keep immigrants out and jobs in. The cry to “take back control” points to securing borders, curbing trade and controlling immigration. The revolt against globalism shows that ever more people are no longer willing to follow the neoliberal program of tearing down borders. Progressives need to decide how open or closed these borders are supposed to be. Moral philosopher Julian Nida-Rümelin sternly warns against a delusional ethics of open borders to save all of humankind from its misery. He directly connects what he calls irresponsible admissions that “border can no longer be secured in the 21st century” to the surge of the wide-spread feelings of loss of control. To answer the call to “take back control”, for him, it is necessary to reconfirm the close connection between functioning borders and a survival of the state.

How to organise progressive struggles?

Debate 10: Sovereignty. Where to take a stand — in the corally of the nation state or on the international plane?

Some of today’s hottest debates are over the free flow of goods, capital, people and ideas. Has the neoliberal globalization of the last few decades has benefitted everyone or only a few? Liberals insist that globalization has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, and benefitted Western workers with affordable consumer goods. The losers of globalization on the deindustrialized rustbelts, on the other hand, demand to “bring jobs back home”. The populist call to “take back control” echoes fears over the loss of control and the longing for sovereignty in a globalized world. Right wing populists are only too eager to translate this anger into nationalism including protectionist and anti-immigration measures.

On the Left, these calls are echoed by those who seek refuge from the onslaught of globalization in the national collar. Left nationalists see the EU as one of the primary drivers of neoliberal globalization and restructuring. Perry Anderson argues the EU has become “an oligarchic structure, enforcing a bitter economic regime of privilege for the few and duress for the many”. Left “Lexiteers” like Alan Johnson see the European Union as an authoritarian project of neoliberal integration which main purpose is to seal off key policy areas from the operation of the free market over austerity to immigration, from the will of the democratic sovereign. When the proposed constitution was rejected by the voters in France, the Netherlands and later Ireland, these critics remind us, it was imposed anyway. When the elected governments of Italy and Greece objected to austerity policies, they were replaced by technocrats. When the Greeks elected an anti-austerity government, the Vice President of the European Commission Jyrki Katainen touted that “we don’t change our position according to elections”. One day after the Brexit referendum, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker vowed to plough through with the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Progressives are alarmed that core social democratic instruments like the Keynesian toolbox have been de facto outlawed by the Stability and Growth Pact. Enforcement of austerity rules against a defiant electorate, Alan Johnson argues, effectively amounted to the “economic waterboarding of Greece”. When European institutions by design are unaccountable to any electorate, and national elections no longer change anything, Lexiteers argue, the only way to preserve a democratic political system and a social democratic society is to vote for Brexit. Continental Left nationalists, equally believing the struggle against the neoliberal hegemony in Brussels to be a lost cause, call to take back control by retreating into the fortress of the nation. A return to the nation state, German sociologist Wolfgang Streeck argues, is to “seek refuge in democratic protection, popular rule, local autonomy, collective goods and egalitarian traditions”.

Finding oneself in the same camp with right wing nativists, however, runs counter to the internationalist tradition of the Left. Accordingly, internationalists dismiss this revival of socialism-in-one-country as the return of the petty socialist. Sociologist Armin Nassehi acknowledges that in the 19th century, the nation and the nation state allowed for the emergence of a political civilization, for instance the democratic reconciliation of interests as well as the critique of the ruling elite. The nation state, he argues, can no longer solver the problems of today’s complex and pluralistic societies. As a unit, the nation state is too small to tackle the global challenges from climate change to global terrorism and financial capitalism. Accordingly, internationalists insist that in order to rebuke the neoliberal onslaught, progressive movements need to organize and operate on the same plane as globalized capital. Federalists like German political scientist Ulrike Guérot believe that the European Republic would be the better alternative. Encompassing the biggest market in the world, the European Union would be in a much better position to wage a struggle with global capitalism than its small nation states ever could on their own.

Italian filmmaker Thomas Fazi dismisses the call to move beyond the nation state as a self-fulling fallacy political decision-makers have bought into because they lack the political will to stand up to the forces of global capital. French sociologist Didier Eribon points to a deeper trend. In the public discourse the antagonism between capital and labour has been diverted towards the demarcation between native and migrant workers. As a result, the former Proletariat has largely deserted to right wing populism. The international Left hence faces the dilemma that its cultural messages alienate the working class, while its economic message is not acceptable to its middle-class supporters.

Not all Left nationalists, however, are opposed to the European Union. Both Scottish nationalists as well as Northern Irish Republicans fiercely vow to remain within the European Union. This pro-European sentiment is echoed by the “Pulse of Europe” demonstrations, which show their support for the European integration project all over the continent.

Debate 11: Agency: How to build broad societal alliances for the struggle?

With the Proletariat gone, the Left has long been in search of a new historical subject. In other words, it has been difficult to determine who the agents of change are, and on what platform they could come together to mount a collective struggle. After the relative demise of political parties, a lot of hope was put on new social movements. However, attempts to bring together the myriads of single issue movements in Multitudes, like the World Social Forum or Occupy, have disintegrated quickly without leaving much of a trace. Their refusal to organise and unite around a common agenda has been inspired by Antonio Negri’s celebration of diversity as an end in itself. The rejection to reduce the plurality of the Multitude onto a common denominator, however, has made these movements unable to overcome collective action problems. For Spanish moral philosopher Ramon Andrés Feenstra and his colleagues, this “tyranny of structurelessness” equals to making a “fetish of presence over voice”. The narrow focus on participatory, direct democracy of many contemporary movements, they argue, reflects a nostalgic desire for face-to-face, neighbourhood interactions, a slower, community-based way of life that resembles more the assembly democracy of classical Greece than the reality of our millions or even billion strong societies. Accordingly, critics have lamented that the tribalization of the progressive camp into smaller and smaller movements has undermined its ability to take on the structural challenges of the capitalist system. This is why Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth have long called for the reunification of the struggles for redistribution and recognition. Yet, regrettably little progress has been made in building broad societal rainbow alliances. Where efforts have been made, like the Bernie Sanders campaign, they exposed the deep fault lines that divide the Left.

Today, efforts are being made to revive The People as the collective change agent. Populists on the Left and the Right seek to bring together a broad societal coalition of the “underdogs” against the “establishment”, with the common objective to take back the power usurped by the oligarchic elite. As they had to find out, however, except its opposition to the 1%, there is very little which unites the 99%. To build a broad alliance between social groups with vastly different interests, a potpourri of policies is not enough. What is needed is a platform which constitutes a collective agent. In other words, before individuals become capable of collective action, the collective needs to be constructed. Individuals are more willing to work together if they believe they belong to the same imagined community. Identity narratives add to the self-awareness of groups as change agents, and contribute to mobilization, cohesion and orientation. This is why collective identity narratives are so critical for collective action.

How such a collective identity narrative is constructed will have profound strategic implications. Homogeneous in-groups tend to be easier to mobilise, and have less internal frictions than heterogeneous groups. This would suggest a purist narrative to keep the alliance narrow and compact. How does this square with the need to mobilize the vast resources needed to challenge the oligarchic elites? If the strategic objective is to build the societal alliance as broad as possible, then the identity narrative should resonate as widely as possible.

In sum, questions of identity play into a wide variety of crucial political conflicts. To formulate effective policies from immigration to re-distribution, progressives need to better understand the interconnections between identity and political economy. Progressive Patriotism can help to lay a new political foundation for the solidarity community. How it is defined, however, will have far reaching implications for the ability to build broad societal alliances as the principal agents for change.

Further Reading:

Ali, Tariq. The Extreme Centre. A Second Warning. Verso, 2015, 2018.

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, London, 1983.

Bader, Michael J. The Psychology of Patriotism, Phi Delta Kappa International, Vol. 87, №8 (April 2006), pp. 582–584, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20442088 .

Bourdieu, Pierre and Passeron, Jean-Claude. Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction, in Richard K. Brown (Ed.), Knowledge, Education and Cultural Change. London: Tavistock, 1977

Bussemer, Thymian, Christian Krell and Henning Meyer. Social democratic Values in the Second Machine Age, NGFH Quarterly 2/2016.

Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me. New York, 2015.

Collier, Paul. Exodus: How Migration Is Changing Our World. Oxford University Press, 2015.

Crouch, Colin, Post-Democracy, Polity Press, 2004.

Fazi, Thomas. The Battle for Europe: How an Elite Hijacked a Continent and How We Can Take It Back, Pluto Press, 2014.

Feenstra, Ramón Andrés, Andreu Casero-Ripolles, John Keane and Simon Tormey. How the Spanish political laboratory is reconfiguring democracy. 23.3.2017. The Conversation. http://theconversation.com/how-the-spanish-political-laboratory-is-reconfiguring-democracy-74874 accessed 14.4.2017.

Fraser, Nancy and Axel Honneth. Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-philosophical Exchange, Verso, 2003.

Fukuyama, Francis. Identity. The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. Profile Books, London, 2018.

Goodhart, David. Discomfort of strangers. The Prospect, 24.2.2004.

Guérot, Ulrike. Warum Europa eine Republik werden muss! Eine politische Utopie. Dietz 2016.

Habeck, Robert. Patriotismus — Ein linkes Plädoyer, Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2010.

Habermas, Jürgen. The Postnational Constellation: Political Essays, Oxford, Polity, 2001.

Haidt, Jonathan. When and Why Nationalism beats Globalism. And how moral psychology can help explain and

reduce tensions between the two. The American Interest, Vol. 12, No 1 10–7–2016.

Hall, Stuart and Paul du Gay. Questions of Cultural Identity, Sage Publications, 1996.

Held, David. Democracy and the Global order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance, Oxford, Polity, 1996.

Johnson, Alan. Why Brexit is Best for Britain: The Left-Wing Case, New York Times, 28.3.2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/28/opinion/why-brexit-is-best-for-britain-the-left-wing-case.html?_r=0 accessed 14.4.2017.

Kohlenberg, Kerstin, Gero von Randow and Heinrich Wefing. Kampf dem System, Die Zeit, 2.2.2017.

Koppetsch, Cornelia. In Deutschland daheim, in der Welt zu Hause? Soziopolis, 22.12.2017. https://soziopolis.de/beobachten/gesellschaft/artikel/in-deutschland-daheim-in-der-welt-zu-hause/

Lakoff, George. Don’t Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2004.

Lerner, Michael. The Left Hand of God. Harper San Francisco, 2006.

Lind, Michael. The Open-Borders ‘Liberaltarianism’ of the New Urban Elite, National Review, 26.9.2016, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/440055/open-borders-ideology-americas-urban-elite-threat-nationalism

McIntosh, Peggy. White Privilege. Unpacking the invisible Knapsack, 1988.

Mishra, Pankaj. From the ruins of empire. The revolt against the West and the remaking of Asia. Allen Lane, 2012.

Mouffe, Chantal. Agonistics: Thinking the World Politically, Verso, July 2013.

Nash, Kate. Cosmopolitan Political Community: Why does it feel so right?, Constellations Vol 10, No 4, 2003

Nassehi, Armin. Die Stunde der letzten Wahrheit. Warum rechts und links keine Alternativen mehr sind und die Gesellschaft ganz anders beschrieben werden muss. Murmann, Hamburg, 2015.

Nickel, Carsten. Rückbau der Gesellschaft, Merkur, 1.4.2019, https://www.merkur-zeitschrift.de/author/carsten-nickel/

Polletta, Francesca and James M Jasper. Collective identity and Social Movements. Annual review of Sociology, Vol. 27 (2001), p. 283–305.

Putnam, Robert. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Simon & Schuster, 2001.

Reckwitz, Andreas. Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten: Zum Strukturwandel der Moderne, Suhrkamp, 2017.

Nida-Rümelin, Julian. Über Grenzen denken. Eine Ethik der Migration, Edition Körber-Stiftung, 2017.

Sen, Amartya. Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny, W. W. Norton, 2007.

Sen, Amartya. The argumentative Indian, Allen Lane, 2005.

Stenner, Karen. The Authoritarian Dynamic, Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Streeck, Wolfgang, Buying Time. The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism. Verso, London, 2014.

Streeck, Wolfgang. How will capitalism end? Verso, London, 2016.

Stryker, Sheldon, Timothy J. Owens and Robert W. White. Self, Identity and Social Movements. University of Minnesota Press, 2000.

Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self. The Making of the Modern Identity, Harvard University Press, 1989

Turner, Bryan. Liberal Citizenship and Cosmopolitan Virtue, in: Andrew Vandenberg. Citizenship and Democracy in a Global Era, Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2000.

Walzer, Michael. Spheres of Justice. A Defense of Pluralism an Equality. Basic Books, 1983.

Žižek, Slavoj. Das Leben ist nun einmal krass, Neue Zürcher Zeitung. 25.3.2017 https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/sex-verbote-das-leben-ist-nun-einmal-krass-ld.153338 accessed 15.4.2017.