“Wokeness” is perhaps the most overused phrase in America today. Flip the channel to Fox News, or any of its less-popular imitators, and chances are you will be treated to some red-faced pundit or blonde-haired commentator ranting about the latest “woke” outrage. Even more sophisticated criticism from serious conservatives or classical liberals have been repeated to the point of tedium in the Wall Street Journal or the Free Press.
Fredrik deBoer’s latest book criticizing the concept, nonetheless, is more interesting than most standard-issue, anti-woke hot takes. Titled How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement and out this month in a new paperback edition, it is a no-holds-barred attack on the excesses of cutting-edge progressives from their own left-flank. Although conservatives are unlikely to agree with deBoer’s perspective entirely (he was raised as an outright communist and cut his teeth as an activist agitating against the Iraq War and for gay rights), they can learn much from his biting critique of the lunatics and failures who have seized control of left-wing politics.
DeBoer’s central thesis is that left-wingers have shunted working-class interests to make room for cultural concerns – making the left far less radical than it should be. He certainly affirms the goals of anti-racist, feminist, and gay rights activists, but also recognizes how the business and political establishments can co-opt these causes to stifle pushes for radical economic change. DeBoer is warning his left-wing readers that the supposedly proper slogans about identity and “righteous” motivations cannot replace the hard work of political organizing that translate to tangible wins for their base.
In this sense, deBoer actually resembles his counterparts on the right who also position themselves against “neoliberalism.” Populist voices such as American Compass economist Oren Cass or Republican senator and vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance have been pushing for their party to refocus on a certain vision of economics over and against the more traditional concerns of social conservatives. An even more extreme sect of ideologues within their camp might even be called “Right-Wing Marxists,” and advocate abandoning Reaganite priorities for the sake of revolutionary power politics.
DeBoer, however, is an actual Marxist. Not satisfied with the gradual reforms of the Obama administration or their slogans about “hope and change,” he wants to see a much more revolutionary style of politics. Like the hosts of popular far-left podcast Chapo Trap House and many of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’s supporters, deBoer truly wants to seize the means of production and redistribute wealth. He does not accept the comparatively low-stakes identity politics of Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton because they do so little to challenge the interests of Capital or advance the interests of the working class. Simply electing a black or female president will not change the world. At the end of the day, he deems the mainstream of Democratic party politics far too “conservative” because they are unwilling to “punish” the ruling class with the intensity he believes they deserve.
The upheaval of 2020 filled deBoer with hope that a new radicalism was on the horizon. The demonstrations which erupted after the killing of George Floyd could have portended some kind of actual change. Yet only a few months later, deBoer became disillusioned. “The heady, emotional, and radical atmosphere that predominated has evaporated,” he laments, noting that no major federal legislation was passed in response to the protests. “People still speak about turning society upside down, but the fervor is gone,” deBoer complains, and even worse “many seem vaguely embarrassed to look back on it now.” Far from seeing 2020 as a moment of left-wing success, he concludes it was a year of wasted effort. Democrats harnessed the revolutionary energy in the streets to win Joe Biden the presidency, and the far-left has – in deBoer’s view at least – not received any of the rewards it is due.
Conservatives will perhaps be interested to learn that, starting from Marxian ideological premises, deBoer believes “The Left” has no meaningful power in American politics. For a decade or longer, right-wing writers advocating either political retreat (such as the expatriate Rod Dreher) or renewed aggression (like “Christian nationalists” or integralists) have been whining that progressive elites have denied them access to the cultural and political “commanding heights.” The bogeyman of “cultural Marxism” is almost as prevalent in right-wing commentary as “wokeness.” But the liberalism Clinton-Obama Democrats embody has little to do with the progressive vision deBoer affirms. If the loudest voices on both sides of the aisle believe they are effectively powerless, who is actually in control? DeBoer would answer “the elites” – the wealthy and powerful, the Capital that Marxists have always treated as the great devilish force exploiting society.
There is considerable substance to this class analysis, and conservatives would do well to learn from it. As deBoer puts it, “Show me a political movement, and I’ll show you those who find a way to profit off it; profiteering is endemic to political striving.” This is just as true on the right as it is on the left. When Donald Trump won the 2016 election, many Republicans hoped that he would reshape the party and find a new direction. While his bitter, conspiratorial style has been adopted by imitators at all levels and wonks and theorists attempted to articulate a coherent “Trumpist” ideological agenda, Trump largely governed like a standard Republican – though certainly more rhetorically reckless. All his “populism” amounted to was an expansion of the welfare state and a boring tax cut; hardly policies that challenged the ruling class. Ultimately, the elites calling the shots in the Trump administration were mostly the same entrenched figures who did so under other Republican presidents. Politics became more inflamed, but little meaningfully changed.
DeBoer also applies this logic to what he calls the “nonprofit industrial complex” of left-wing organizations. Tax-exempt institutions dedicated to leftist ideals are, in his view, often coopted by unrealistic ideologues or capitalism’s liberal handmaids. They become cynical forces arrayed in defense of oligarchy, often by exploiting the earnest efforts of left-wing activists to better society.
Conservatives should recognize this pattern. As the American Enterprise Institute’s Matt Continetti has observed in his history of our movement, The Right, after Ronald Reagan’s presidency failed to produce a true successor, institutions (both for-profit and non-profit) stepped in to fill the gap. An “apparatus” composed of an “institutional and media superstructure had taken on gigantic dimensions during twelve years of Republican presidents.” This “beachhead” is susceptible to the same kind of institutional capture by self-interested forces either wealthy or crazy that deBoer chronicles among its left-wing counterparts. Leaders of both sides of the “nonprofit industrial complex” are liable to treat their organizations more as their personal fiefdoms than as tools to genuinely shape public opinion for the common good. It is a decadent trend against which professional conservatives should be zealously on guard.
Despite his paeans to the value of practical activism, there is little in fact constructive about deBoer’s perspective. His unyielding pessimism and withering criticism are unlikely to win him friends among the liberal Democrats whom he acknowledges actually hold the reins of power. This is, of course, by design – he is committed to a far more revolutionary style of politics that takes the inevitability of class conflict as its starting point. But conservatives frustrated with the elite mismanagement of the Republican Party should see this more as a cautionary tale than a model to follow.
Ultimately, the way to achieve meaningful change in American politics is to get buy-in from the representatives of as many interest groups as possible. The Founders wisely built our constitutional system, with its complex web of checks and balances, to require widespread consensus before any policy can be implemented. Neither Labor nor Capital can exercise absolute power in our republic. That system may have been degraded by more than a century of centralization, but it still meaningfully operates. Brute force – even rioting – will not be enough to overwhelm it. Mere rage gets you nowhere.
Our Constitution, then, means populist reaction or ideological radicalism will never receive widespread support. That is why neither the right nor the left has articulated a sufficiently unifying vision to achieve real change. Until one side or the other does, power will largely remain in the hands of the elite deBoer rightly castigates. If conservatives can find a way to advocate their principles in a more appealing way, relevant to the concerns of the great body of the people, perhaps they can show America the path to a far more truly radical renaissance.
