SPONSORED: This article is part of a series that seeks to elevate and define a progressive vision of “the good life,” developed by the Roosevelt Institute in collaboration with The American Prospect. You can read the whole series here.
Neoliberalism’s grip is slipping. The ideological, economic, and cultural paradigm of the last half-century is waning, and for good reason. Neoliberalism has been disastrous for America’s political economy, as austerity, privatization, and deregulation have led to crippling wealth and political inequality. More insidious though equally damaging, neoliberalism has also created a sort of cultural sickness; hyperindividualism and the ever-present narratives of deservedness, productivity, and merit have infiltrated our psyches, warping our sense of self, how we view others, and how we move through the world. It’s no surprise that we are facing loneliness and suicide epidemics, that overwork and burnout are commonplace, and that our society has become atomized.
As the neoliberal order recedes, a tide of longing for a better life has washed over American society. We yearn for community and to belong to something greater than ourselves. We want to exercise control and agency over our lives. We yearn to feel safe and to experience a sense of stability. We crave clear and simple explanations for why the world works as it does, to understand why things are as they are. And perhaps most of all, we all simply long to feel good, when so much of our day-to-day lives is filled with stress, despair, and anxiety.
We know this system has failed us, and there is a clear appetite from both sides of the political spectrum to change course. The right has focused most of its attention on the psychic dissatisfaction the neoliberal order has inflicted on people, largely through the realm of mass culture. It has capitalized on the longing tide, channeling it for political gain, in service of realizing its vision of what it believes society should look like, how it should work, and for whom.
By contrast, the left has done little to engage with people’s psychic longings. Instead, it’s worked to push for and champion strong, progressive economic policies to replace the neoliberal ones that have radically expanded material inequality. This is important, critical work. But it’s not enough on its own, and it is unable to rival the emotional appeals made by the right. What are piecemeal policies compared to a large-scale vision of a purportedly just, utopian society?
The right starts with a clear idea of what it views as the good life—for individuals and for society at large. Its policy platforms and political decisions flow from that vision and are crafted in service of it. Of course, that vision is exclusionary and threatening—a heteronormative, theocratic, patriarchal ethnostate, a caste system dominated by wealthy, white, cisgender, heterosexual Christian men. But horrific as it is, it’s a clear, articulable vision, and one that allows the right to function with coordination and cohesion to establish an entrenched reality. It’s a far more strategic course of action than the wonky, narrow approach we tend to take on the left.
As the neoliberal order recedes, a tide of longing for a better life has washed over American society.
In a recent Roosevelt Institute report titled “The Cultural Contradictions of Neoliberalism: The Longing for an Alternative Order and the Future of Multiracial Democracy in an Age of Authoritarianism,” my co-authors Deepak Bhargava, Harry W. Hanbury, and I argue that we on the left need to adopt this strategy. We need to ground our politics, policy, and cultural engagement in an inclusive, equitable, and progressive vision of the good life. Our policy decisions and political moves should flow downstream from that vision. We can’t afford to put the cart before the horse, not when the future of our democracy hangs in the balance.
But what should that vision look like? What are its essential elements? What can we learn from the countless brilliant people who are already working toward a better tomorrow, from their experiences in various movements on the left? How should the sense of longing so many people feel—for community and belonging, agency and control, safety, understanding, and feeling good—inform our conceptions of the good life?
This collection humbly seeks to explore these questions. Contributors from a range of backgrounds, lineages, and life experiences will offer a unique perspective in their attempt to answer some of these difficult but important questions.
In “Locating Ourselves in the Wreckage of Neoliberalism,” American studies scholar Daniel HoSang and philosopher Colena Sesanker stress the importance of recognizing our interdependence and wielding our collective power to fight against right-wing attacks on higher education. Using Connecticut for All’s Democracy School as an example of an effort that brings people together for political education, organizing, and community-building, they argue for spaces that help us break free from isolation and alienation—emotional states the far right depends on in its assaults on higher education that prevent us from realizing the good life.
In “Why We Should Care About Low-Carbon Leisure,” climate policy expert and activist Johanna Bozuwa analyzes the ways in which policy can create sociopsychological feedback loops. Specifically, she argues for policies that would expand access to low-carbon leisure, helping to combat not only the climate crisis, but the connection and meaning crises too. Pools, local sports, accessible parks, and shorter workweeks, Bozuwa contends, can transform our culture while also decarbonizing our communities.
In “Psychological Reparations,” clinical and community psychologist Riana Elyse Anderson explores the need for psychological reparations, in addition to cash payments, for Black Americans. Psychological reparations, Anderson argues, can be an instrumental part of the repair and redress needed to combat the psychic, intergenerational harms inflicted on Black Americans. Mending these racialized harms must be part of any vision of the good life.
In “How Neoliberalism Cuts Off Community,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) examines how individualism has prevailed over communitarianism in the United States. He argues for a bipartisan approach to tackling the psychic harms neoliberalism has produced for Americans, and highlights his recent efforts to spur a national conversation about the role public policy can play in fostering greater purpose and connection—two important pieces of any conception of the good life.
In “Labor & Culture: Beyond Jimmy Hoffa Movies,” labor lawyer Jenny Hunter makes the case for strong labor unions as a key component of a progressive good life. She argues for more positive cultural representations of unions and highlights the role that unions play in forging connection, solidarity, and community among workers.
And in “Looking Across,” movement strategist and organizer Maurice Mitchell emphasizes the importance of coming together to establish a shared understanding of what all people should be entitled to. Through organizing and utilizing narrative power, Mitchell imagines a progressive agenda that breaks free from the neoliberal and authoritarian conceptions of what society should look like.
In “The Cultural Contradictions of Neoliberalism,” we argue that our political and policy decisions should be grounded in a progressive vision of the good life. The contours of that vision remain up for debate, and many questions are still unanswered. But each contributor in this essay collection offers important insights, considerations, and queries that serve as an initial step of a much larger conversation about what that vision should look like, what we want to achieve, and what kind of lives we ultimately want to live. It’s a lofty goal, no doubt. But at this political hinge point, it’s arguably more important than ever. After all, we cannot achieve what we cannot dream.
