Anthony Barnett - Taking Control!: Humanity and America after Trump and the Pandemic

Published by Repeater Books

An imprint of Watkins Media Ltd

Unit 11 Shepperton House

89-93 Shepperton Road

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United Kingdom

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A Repeater Books paperback original 2022

Distributed in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York.

Copyright Anthony Barnett 2022

Anthony Barnett asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

ISBN: 9781914420269

Ebook ISBN: 9781914420276

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

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Printed and bound in the UK by TJ Books

With discontent uniting so many of us, at a time when the climate crisis demands real change, how can we break through deadening polarization? How do we build both the democratic movement and the structures essential for us to take control? Barnett has done a wonderful job in capturing so much. As a fellow 68er, I applaud his coherent challenge to keep organizing.

L ARRY C OHEN , B OARD C HAIR , O UR R EVOLUTION, PAST PRESIDENT , C OMMUNICATIONS W ORKERS OF A MERICA

Out of the ruins of neoliberalism and its vast human cost there emerged Donald Trump. He was denied a second term by disparate forces that, if properly united, offer real hope. In this superb analysis from the democratic (and romantic) left, sometimes withering, essentially optimistic, Anthony Barnett generously delivers a rebuke to the pessimism that is paralysing a scattered opposition. The centre and left must hold together. This passionately conceived book comes at a crucial moment, for the stakes could not be higher. If Trump and his grim surrogates around the world succeed then, among much else, climate change resistance is doomed, Barnett argues. He has given a lifetime to the cause of a saner, more democratic politics and his memory is long. Here, his mission is grand and big-hearted. He ranges widely to propose how we might act so the destructive, delusional folly of Trumpism shall not pass.

I AN M C E WAN

A wonderful book that tells a compelling story of a democratic awakening. Agency and possibility are back to reanimate the spirit of 1968. But also for the darker forces it unleashed, not least Trumpism, which seized on the nightmare America became for far too many. A worldly optimist, conscious of past defeats, Barnett sets out a possible route to a democratic future.

D AVID E DGERTON , AUTHOR OF T HE R ISE AND F ALL OF THE B RITISH N ATION

Up against the wickedness of those who choose to abuse their wealth and power, Anthony Barnett sees a slender chance for hope in the USA, and challenges us to rethink how we do politics. I hope hes right.

C AROLINE L UCAS , G REEN MP FOR B RIGHTON P AVILION

Anthony Barnett writes beautifully and with sharp insight, and about the possibilities opened up by historical contingency and human creativity. Whether he is right about the rest of the contemporary juncture and with such panoramic scope that is unlikely he is blunt and stark on the threat posed by Trumpism, and clear-eyed about the struggle to prevent climate breakdown.

P ROFESSOR N ICK P EARCE , D IRECTOR , IPR, B ATH ; H EAD OF THE P RIME M INISTERS P OLICY U NIT 2008 TO 2010

Taking Control! is a moving exploration of political possibility and an essential guide for making sense of our historical moment, its potential and dangers. Sketching what he calls the forces of humanisation, Anthony Barnett provides a terrific account of todays unequal global order, with the US at the center, as well as the potential for genuine change.

A ZIZ R ANA , P ROFESSOR OF C ONSTITUTIONAL L AW , C ORNELL U NIVERSITY AND AUTHOR OF T HE T WO F ACES OF A MERICAN F REEDOM

Taking Control! is a marvellous book that reads like a thriller. It shows us how the fascist inclinations are innate to the neoliberal system and offers a solid way out of the global perils without hesitating to discuss the socialist option. It is clear from the tone that Barnett truly feels the pain of man-made troubles of our age and makes it his own problem to fight against them.

E CE T EMELKURAN

For Rosemary Bechler
and the inspirations and arguments of a lifetime.

Also by Anthony Barnett:

Aftermath: The Struggle of Cambodia & Vietnam (with John Pilger)

Iron Britannia: Why Parliament Waged its Falklands War (new edition, 2012)

Soviet Freedom

This Time: Our Constitutional Revolution

The Athenian Option: Radical Reform of the House of Lords (with Peter Carty)

Blimey, It Could Be Brexit!

The Lure of Greatness: Englands Brexit and Americas Trump

Edited books:

Debating the Constitution (with Caroline Ellis and Paul Hirst)

Power and the Throne

Town and Country (with Roger Scruton)

Contents

Introduction

You will never get anywhere by giving people truths on a plate; they wont thank you for it.

Rosemary Bechler

Things are not as easily understood nor as expressible as people usually would like us to believe.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Many of us, perhaps including you, have thought and said that COVID-19 is an alert, a cosmic signal that we need a course correction. In May 2020, as its economic impact hit America, Trump complained, This is so unfair to me! Everything was going great. We were cruising to re-election! Indeed, he was.

Why he wasnt re-elected is at the heart of this book. It gives us grounds for optimism in an era of pessimism. Also, the response to the pandemic tells us we can create a different way of governing life on Earth. Not because there is a new answer to which we can turn or an old one waiting to be finally collected from left luggage. But because the potential of far-reaching change was being created all along, under governments of all political stripes, and has now taken us by surprise. This was due to forces of humanisation that resisted the marketisation of life and developed below the political surface of a world that celebrated the supremacy of the rich and powerful.

The monsters are frustrated not vanquished, which can make them all the more dangerous. They currently seek to exploit the disruptions caused by COVID and its variants to double-down on their many existing advantages. The Biden administration would like to re-establish Americas global primacy, which was a major cause of our problems in the first place. Nonetheless, something fundamentally positive is happening and his government is a critical part of it.

When change like this takes place, it has a strange quality due to the way our imaginations move faster and are more volatile than our everyday life. At first we think the differences will be dramatic. When they are not, we feel its an anti-climax and conclude that nothing really changes. Ten years later and the world really is different. In 2011, a slogan at the Occupy Wall Street demonstration proclaimed, This is the beginning of the beginning. Ten years later, and at last the beginning has begun: the beginning of a free, equal and inclusive world. The massive growth of official surveillance and the militarisation of police forces tell us that the authorities feel this as well and wish to prevent it.