Glinner reprinted this essay of Mark Fisher's from 2013
It's a lament on the loss of the left's political compass, and its tragic metamorphosis into a defensive, guilt-ridden humourless institution tightly controlled by cultural and media elites, which would rather eat coal than let the words "class conflict" pass over their lips.
Hmmm . . . . What to make of this essay? Yup it's been noted before that if the goal of socialism is to make itself redundant through achievement of the classless society, then capitalism will become expert in selling the illusion that this has already or is about to happen thanks precisely to the success of capitalism, whilst nevertheless retaining the class dividing mechanisms which propel productivity through continuing exploitation of human labour, but now made faceless via the application of massive and impenetrable bureaucracy.
Under these circumstances it becomes nearly impossible for socialism to keep its focus on the target, and easy for capitalism to lampoon the activism of socialism as backwards and irrelevant in a modern society. Once trade unions become sterilised and emasculated it becomes easy to convince a captive population, that such things are regressive relics of a not so efficient past - a past whose injustices have in any case already been addressed, or at least are capable of being addressed, by the established system. Socialism then retreats into identitarianism and media and cultural elitism where it becomes the champagne socialist parody of itself the right has such fun ridiculing.
This kind of socialism in its survival battle will inevitably become moralising and dependent on the nurturing of guilt mechanisms as the only strategy seemingly available to hold on to the faithful. In doing so it becomes more of an elite driven cult than a class driven political movement and eventually indistinguishable from the ruling class it long ago set itself up in opposition to.
All of this was accurately predicted by Marcuse back in the sixties.
Probably no-one however could then have predicted the rise of the trans movement. The fascination of the trans phenomenon is exactly that such a diabolical - and not just misogynist but actually misanthropic - movement, could have succeeded in capturing the humanist left to the degree it has done. The trans movement has fatally exposed the weakness of present day socialism, in its demonstration of how easy it has been to drive a wedge between this class-sanitized, moralising, panic plagued socialism and an originally socialistically oriented feminism.
Behind the trans movement lies a hideously misanthropic, capitalistic and patriarchal industrial enterprise laughing all the way to the bank. It's a supreme irony that this movement has succeeded in indelibly stamping its hallmark on today's socialism so much so that you now have to demonstrate that you are ready to pay homage to the movement - e.g. by bleating the mindless trans women are women mantra - if you want acceptance as a good socialist and to be awarded your place on the right side of history. For the truth is this movement has nothing but contempt for both socialist and feminist goals.