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/375/ From Hyperliberalism to the Grayzone (Patreon)

Published:
2023-11-14 12:00:36
Edited:
2023-11-14 14:21:15
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Content

On John Gray's The New Leviathans.

[Patreon Exclusive]

We discuss the British post-liberal philosopher's new book, looking at his background, ideological journey, and why he might be of interest. We also ask:

How does John Gray use Hobbes and the idea of a Leviathan?

What is a "state of nature", and what would an artificial state of nature be?

Is Gray right in this characterization of liberalism?

Is hyperliberalism the product of liberalism's decay?

What is postliberalism and how does Gray’s project fit with it?

Readings:

The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism, John Gray

Pseudo-Leviathans, George Hoare, Damage

Files

Comments

Davka Smolah Collective

Insofar as Gray associates hyperliberalism and unlimited self-definition with "wokeness", I think he's out of his bloody mind. "Wokeness" and "hyperliberalism" are precisely not about unlimited self-definition; they are about attacking and smashing actually-existing forms of association, self-definition, and self-determination as backwards, oppressive remnants of a perceived old world. "Wokeness" is not pronouns in your Twitter bio or transgender rights. It's demonstrators mobbing buildings demanding to abolish their own made-up image of what they think the people in those buildings are and are doing. It is itself a head of the post-liberal hydra and a fucking affront to social freedom. In describing the bourgeoisie, Marx wrote, "All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify." This is how you can recognize the "hyperliberalism" of the professional petty-bourgeoisie: in order to justify their class position they are impelled by market pressure to invent new fixed, fast-frozen relations, with new trains of ancient and venerable prejudices, to sweep away.

Surface Envy

'Exposing how deeply attached the British ruling elite were to pre-Brexit British politics' *Undertaker theme plays* 'IT'S DAAAAAAVID CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMERON!'

Andrew Scerri

I think Gray might be doing an Ulrich Beck redux? Didn’t Beck kind of identify the Risk Society with a similar shift?

Richard R

Interesting questions at the end about thickness and thinness of meaning. The trial of Gilles de Rais was exactly about how much serfs belong or not to a lord, and reciprocally, how much a lord is obliged to protect his serfs--was my understanding of that at least. The existence of such sadistic figures points to a question of how thick medieval ideology was, in fact. But that aside, it occurs to me that existentialism is exactly the big circus tent under which contemporary ideologies operate. Hagglund is in one corner saying our spiritual freedom longs for excess time, Gray in another corner, saying our time is in short supply with shorter options--so deal with it! Hyper-liberalism offering a vision in which we have no choices or control now, but offers a telos where some future human will be free to self-determine--offering us consumerist self-fashioning in the short term as a down payment. All of these seem to me existentialist in the sense that we're invited into meaning-making, however variously constrained.

Lee Jones

John Gray's claim that contemporary states - "new Leviathans" - are "engineers of the soul" is ridiculous (and that is why Alex's repeated claim that contemporary liberal states are "more totalitarian than the authoritarian states of the early 20th century" is also so wrong). Even Russia and China have very little interest in moulding a new kind of man. They only exert repressive control over their citizens, hoping they will remain politically passive -- not that they will become übermenschen, new racial masters or even Stakhanovites. The only "meaning" they have to offer are crabbed, nationalistic visions that are ultimately victimhood stories (poor Mother Russia bullied by evil colonial NATO; the Century of Humiliation and evil US trying to crush us). It's precisely this ideological hollowness that means their counterhegemonic challenge is so weak.

Mark Neufeld

Wokeness is the non-statist component of the liberal worldview (in essence it’s displaced emotive Christian heart) picked up (sublated?) by/into the secular post-liberal neo-hobbesian state. Does this work? Why? Window dressing to mask it’s essentially Hobbesian character, which the state’s gen-X narcissistic leadership class can’t bear.

Knoroz

First, I thought this was the same John Gray from “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus” which was very confusing. More seriously, I was surprised that no one pointed out that the problem with current incarnation of liberalism is that it is built on work (you know The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism stuff). The encroachment of woke and other things onto our society is just an implicit realization that that work and productivity are no longer central to us. Capitalism can now accept all sorts of distractions to its original productive mission because it doesn’t need it anymore. That is why, for example, the CIA can recruit whoever to do the job that was previously highly skilled. We all know that it doesn't matter as the new recruits work or productivity is utterly irrelevant to the CIA overall position and efficacy. Liberalism in its capitalistic formulation revolved around work and once the meaning of work is threatened then we have a crisis of meaning. We are just finding out what will be the new regime of accumulation and that will change the social norms.