Resisting the Capitalist Political Project

Psychology and the question of radical democracy

“…There is much debate here, with some insisting that radical democracy’s ultimate horizon is the development of a sufficiently unified, agonistic consensus within counter-hegemonic power (see Mouffe, 2011), while others argue that radical democracy must strive to develop a better world at the local level; prefiguratively moving people towards self-determination without coercive state apparatuses (see Singh, 2019). While a definitive answer cannot be provided here, it is worth noting that I am concerned in this article with the latter argument (see also Malherbe, 2023b); inspired specifically by the “democracy at the margins” practiced in South Africa’s spaces of state abandonment (see Ngwane, 2021). Yet, I nonetheless believe that there are strategic moments, determined by the anticapitalist demos, when counter-hegemony is useful for advancing emancipatory struggle.…”

“…The discipline has been used in efforts to legitimise fascist ideologies across Europe (e.g., attempts by Italian race psychologists to establish racialised psychic differences that would serve as the basis for fascistic white supremacism in the country; Volpato, 2000), and in naturalising the occupation of Palestine (Sheehi & Sheehi, 2022). Although mainstream psychology differs in the degree to which it has consolidated capitalist democracy (indeed, psychologists do not in every instance do this consciously), psychology remains, for the most part, a discipline of capitalist adaptation rather than anticapitalist resistance (Malherbe, 2023b).…”

“…In response to this, and complementing the nonstatist decolonial approaches to radical democracy, anarchists have engaged with radical democracy through their own political practices, epistemologies, and traditions. For anarchists, radical democracy is brought about through direct actions that prefigure a better, more equal, noncapitalist world in the here and now (Malherbe, 2023b), allowing always for dissent and difference within consensus (Newman, 2011). The anarchist approach to radical democracy, like the decolonial approach, does not find recognition and legitimacy within state structures.…”

“…Democratic interactions are the basis for living in common, meaning that much of everyday life is already structured democratically (Hardt & Negri, 2004). Although radical democracy is by and large disallowed in the everyday of capitalist society (e.g., workplaces are hierarchically organised, just as reproductive labour tends to be feminised and undervalued), there are nonetheless examples from all over the world where everyday radical democracy is practiced anyway (Malherbe, 2023b). In other words, we find radical democracy being practiced under constraining circumstances that inhibit the flourishing of such practice (Brooks et al, 2020).…”

Imperial algorithms: Contemporary manifestations of racism and colonialism

“…However, many have called for further and deeper critical theorizing that incorporates the worldviews of Black, Indigenous, racialized, and differently marginalized groups of peoples. This includes calls from feminist theorists, critical theorists, special issues on diversity, and more recent developments calling for decolonization, solidarity, and expanding ecologies of knowledge (Beals et al, 2021; Carolissen et al, 2017; Francescato, 2020; Furman et al, 2018; Malherbe, 2023; Seedat & Suffla, 2017; Syed et al, 2018; Thomas & Zuckerman, 2018; Tran et al, 2018). In this issue, we sought to build upon and extend these efforts to push beyond the narrowly defined borders of CP scholarship to spotlight the complex, critical, anticolonial, and intersectional thinking of scholars who understand intimately the ways in which interrelated global power structures and relations are internalized and have implications psychologically.…”