The Ideas Letter 1
Oct. 12, 2023
Welcome to the Ideas Letter, where heterodox ideas come alive.
The Ideas Letter is a publication that prizes the unconventional. We find and commission pieces that take time to digest because they don’t have easy conclusions. We won’t try to convince you of anything— other than that the world is complex and reality ever-shifting—because we are not in the business of persuading. We are not here to advocate. What you will find, and we hope embrace, are contributions from across ideological aisles, from a broad range of disciplines and a true cross-section of thinking. If catholicity is your métier, and you are uneasy with banging the drum but would rather hear its many sounds, this is the place for you.
We also really like critique. Not critique that’s mean-spirited or spiteful, but rather critique that raises tough questions, unpacks assumptions, sometimes calls people on the carpet, and always provides opportunity for debate. That is what we are really after— facilitating, augmenting, furthering, and bolstering debate and thinking around issues of consequence. You’ll find here articles, essays, and criticism that will challenge you to think. While we are an English-language digest, we will feature translated pieces from all over the world. And pieces sourced from the widest array of places possible. Let us know what you think, and make sure to tell a friend. Or even someone with whom you disagree!
Thank you for joining us on this intellectual endeavor.
--Leonard Benardo, senior vice president for the Open Society Foundations
Ideas Letter 1
The Ideas Letter loves pieces that challenge fashionable concepts – those that stand unquestioned and dominate the discourse. Polycrisis, the suddenly popular way of referring to the simultaneous collision of several catastrophic events, is a fine example of this and, in this inaugural issue, Ville Lahde goes at it in this essay from Aeon. Populism, a term that has been on the chopping block for some time, gets a fresh scalpel here from the venerable professor of sociology Rogers Brubaker. So too does the omnipresent (and understandable) notion of climate pessimism. We also welcome diamonds in the rough, and are thrilled to spotlight a discussion of the work of iconoclastic economist Isabella Weber. And further, Tyler Austin Harper, a young assistant professor at Bates College in the U.S., is making waves with his bold deconstruction of the thorny issues surrounding the concept of race. This piece from The Atlantic is a fine case in point. This issue’s greatest surprise perhaps is this Lux essay about progressive ideas emerging from a gas station in Alabama. Praxis has never been so powerfully – and unusually – on display.
1. “The polycrisis: Is this the word we need to describe unprecedented convergences between ecological, political and economic strife?” — Ville Lähde, Aeon
The term “polycrisis” has become ubiquitous over the past year, describing a phenomenon characterized by interlocking and simultaneous crises in various domains, including ecological, political, and economic. But meanings of the word diverge, highlighting the need for shared conceptual frameworks to facilitate meaningful debates about the current context.
“Avoiding fatal conflicts and spiralling inequality requires new political coalitions. In the long run, navigating through the polycrisis benefits all, but in the short run the benefits and costs will spread unevenly. There is no avoiding politics. In the era of the polycrisis, environmental politics has to be deeply interwoven with the questions of justice, equality, security and power.”
2. “Rogers Brubaker on Populism, Technocracy, and Hyperconnectivity” — George Washington University’s Illiberalism Studies Program
In this interview, sociologist Rogers Brubaker discusses populism along two dimensions: vertical and horizontal, arguing that both left-wing and right-wing populisms position elites as outsiders albeit with a differing focus on economic or cultural outsiderhood. Populism is discursive and stylistic, its appeal shaped by claims of structural transformations such as the weakening of party systems and individualization of social structures. He argues that populism's opportunities are linked to liberalism’s vulnerabilities.
“Political liberalism’s commitment to minority rights has created an opening for populist majoritarianism; its uneasiness with borders and immigration controls has played into the hands of restrictionists; and its distrust of popular decision-making – its preference for appealing to the courts to protect unpopular rights and for entrusting complex decisions to experts – has made it vulnerable to populist claims that liberalism is undemocratic. Cultural liberalism’s embrace of new forms of difference and political correctness has provoked a powerful populist backlash. And economic liberalism’s indifference to inequality and to the bounded solidarities of community and nation has invited populist claims to protect “the people” against the disruptions of globalization, the frictionless cross-border movement of goods, labor, and capital, and the indignities of precarity.”
3. “Against Climate Pessimism” — César Rendueles, Emilio Santiago Muíño, and Jaime Vindel, Green European Journal
“The environmental apocalypse is in vogue,” according to this piece, originally published in Spanish in Corriente Cálida, which criticizes climate pessimists for bending scientific evidence to support their narrative of inevitable collapse. The authors call for a more nuanced perspective that considers the complex, unpredictable nature of social responses to environmental challenges and rejects the idea that collapse is the only possible future. They also critique the use of the term “collapse," discuss the limitations of climate pessimism in understanding and addressing the environmental crisis – and advocates for a more hopeful and adaptable approach to environmentalism, one that recognizes the potential for positive change and societal transformation.
“Even if we accept the collapsist hypothesis that we are in an irreversible and rapid energy decline and that there will be no miraculous technological breakthrough or leap in progress that will save us … there is a vast amount of generic yet extremely significant political and social variables that could affect that process.”
4. Isabella Weber Has Neoliberal Economists Running Scared — Simon Grothe, Jacobin
Economist Isabella Weber, who previously faced criticism for attributing inflation to corporate profits, has gained recognition in the business press as her analysis gains traction. Her theory suggests that firms systematically pass on inflationary pressures to consumers during economic crises, leading to increased profits, dubbed “greedflation” by the press. But what Weber describes is not “a process fundamentally driven by subjective greed,” according to this piece. Instead of relying on interest rate hikes to combat inflation, Weber proposes strategic price controls managed by the state.
“By pointing to the role of profits, Weber has freed the discourse on rising prices from the straitjacket imposed on it by mainstream theories of inflation. … Thanks to Weber’s analysis, the focus has now shifted to policy instruments such as price controls and windfall profit taxes, and thus on capital, rather than on adjustments to the income of the working class resultant from the unemployment induced by monetary policy.”
5. “I’m a Black Professor. You Don’t Need to Bring That Up: Anti-racists are overcorrecting.” — Tyler Austin Harper, The Atlantic
The author critiques the shift in progressive racial discourse, starting with 2020’s “summer of reckoning,” which has led to a constant foregrounding of racial difference in interpersonal interactions. He argues that approach creates stress, awkwardness, and divisiveness in interracial relationships and does little to combat structural racism. Instead, Harper advocates for a return to a more nuanced understanding of color-blindness, where racial difference doesn't dominate every interaction and a vision of a world where it doesn't make a difference is embraced.
“If we are going to find a way out of the racial discord that has defined American life post-Trump and post-Charlottesville and post-Floyd, we have to begin with a more sophisticated understanding of color-blindness, one that rejects the bad color-blindness on offer from the Republican Party and its partisans, as well as the anti-color-blindness of the anti-racist consultants. Instead, we should embrace the good color-blindness of not too long ago. At the heart of that color-blindness was a radical claim, one imperfectly realized but perfect as an ideal: that despite the weight of a racist past that isn’t even past, we can imagine a world, or at least an interaction between two people, where racial difference doesn’t make a difference.”
6. “Where the Sidewalk Ends: Meet the Rednecks running a mutual aid auto repair shop in Alabama” — Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein, Lux
Zac Henson, a self-proclaimed redneck (in the original sense of the term, which refers to communist-sympathizing miners in West Virginia), runs the Automotive Free Clinic, a pay-what-you-can auto repair shop in the U.S. state of Alabama, where cars are “essential infrastructure” in a system that perpetuates poverty .
But the AFC is also: “a place to confront toxic masculinity and change the nature of work. Because of the culture of Alabama, the project is not explicit about its leftist politics and doesn’t do much in the way of conventional political organizing, allowing it to engage with and retain volunteers from a wide spectrum of ideologies, including unrepentant Trump supporters. But, quietly, for some of its volunteers, the AFC is a chance to turn theory into reality. When people ask Henson about his communist ideas, he just points to the shop. “We’re living communism,” he says with a shrug.”