Crowdfunding cannot save progressive media
Socialism is the only way out of bourgeois domination of mass media.
A decade ago, economic and political circumstances aligned in a way that created a brief window of opportunity for socialist media. Most importantly, technological innovations in digital publishing made forms of mass media like blogging, social, and podcasting accessible to just about anyone with a PC or a smartphone. Around the same time, a historically terrible politician — Hillary Clinton — decided to run for president, creating an opening for an insurgent campaign by the nation’s only socialist Senator. Bernie Sanders made socialism relevant, and digital technologies gave socialists a chance to transform enthusiasm for his candidacy into a market niche for socialist media.
It was not long after circumstance opened a window for socialist media, however, that capital stepped in to close it. Most importantly, capital leveraged its enormous resources into a media campaign to defeat Bernie Sanders that completely crushed the tiny network of crowdfunded startups stood up to defend him. Then, in the decade that followed, capital directed its funding and promotional networks into a two-flank assault on socialist media: progressive influencers and startups on one hand, neopopulist influencers and startups on the other. Over the past ten years both have quite effectively rechanneled popular enthusiasm for class warfare into popular front campaigns of reformism — and away from a direct opposition to capitalism itself. Today all that remains is a fairly stagnant and introverted socialist media market dominated by a handful of outlets and influencers.
One can imagine a universe where Clinton ran an even more disastrous campaign, or where capital was caught so flat-footed by the Sanders candidacy that he managed to make it into the White House before they could mount any kind of meaningful opposition. Less plausibly, one can imagine a socialist media that managed to launch a much bigger labor movement than the one we have today, or that managed to sweep in a much larger and more radical faction of socialists into Congress than the one we ended up with. In both cases, one can then imagine socialists actually accomplishing key points of our agenda — like redistributing the wealth of media moguls and either breaking up or nationalizing their media holdings. With that accomplished, capital never would have had a chance to crush socialist media the way that it has.
But what I, at least, cannot imagine is a world where socialist media survives with the power of the bourgeoisie still in place. The Sanders 2016 and 2020 campaigns were by far the two most well-funded, organized, and goal-oriented socialist media campaigns in history, but they were still easily outgunned because they pit the meagre crowdfunded resources of the working class against the overwhelming resources of capital. Correction: the Democratic wing of capital, because the GOP largely watched both campaigns from the sidelines. Realistically it is hard to imagine that even a Sanders campaign with ten times the donations would have survived the full onslaught of both wings of capital aligned in a general election or lasted particularly long through its first term before Bernie was impeached.
Today I read a plea for donations from a “progressive” media outlet arguing that we will only win if we can fund a media that’s competitive with the right. There’s a lot of progressive writing that I appreciate and I think it’s fine to help out progressive writers as a kindness or an act of charity, but if the last decade of progressive media and activism has taught us anything it’s that as a political strategy this road is a dead end.
Socialism is the only hope for left media. A media that begs the rich for free speech will lose. A media that begs the rich for a liberal-friendly “progressive” politics will lose. If you back those agendas, occasional quirks of history — terrible Democratic candidates or new technological developments — might give you some temporary success, but leaving capital in place means that window of opportunity will quickly close. As soon as you start posing a real challenge to its interests, Thiel and Murdoch and Musk and Bloomberg and Jobs will start writing checks and that will be the end of it.
There is an order of operations here. Back socialist politics and every so often historical circumstance that are mostly beyond your control will give you an opening. Since capitalism is an unstable system these openings are bound to become more promising and frequent with time. Eventually the right opportunity comes along, and as socialists, you immediately use it to disempower the bourgeoisie. This takes away their ability to censor you and it also takes away their ability to financially crush you in the media.
Recognizing this order of operations — and the political priorities that come with it — is what separates a socialist from every other “socialism might be nice someday but we have more important battles to fight right now” liberal in the universe. Personally I am not all that optimistic that circumstances are likely to play in our favor anytime soon; even the Bernie moment, in retrospect, is looking more and more like a false start in a country that was not even remotely ready to make the jump. But if you want even the faintest chance of launching a serious challenge to right-wing media, progressive media isn’t going to get you there. Socialism’s your only way out.