If Woke Is Dead, What Comes Next? Woke may be dying, but history warns: every collapse of the left births a new epoch—often more radical than the last. By Stephen Soukup
https://amgreatness.com/2025/05/17/if-woke-is-dead-what-comes-next/
The other day, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Eric Kaufmann, a professor of politics at the University of Buckingham in England, proclaiming the death of woke and the end of the Progressive Era. This is more than a “vibe-shift,” Kaufmann writes; it’s “the end of the 60-year rise of left-liberalism in American culture.” He continues, arguing that the backlash against the left’s aggressive embrace of identity politics and its imposition of that politics on every aspect of our lives is far more profound and widespread than the 1990s reaction to “political correctness” and has even seeped into the left’s own organs of cultural transmission, including the mainstream media. This, in turn, has created a crisis of confidence among cultural liberals, leaving them disorganized, despondent, and marking the end of “the age of progressive confidence.”
On the one hand, I think Kaufmann is unequivocally right about all of this. I have written about the death of woke and the end of this current era of leftism myself, and I believe that Kaufmann has identified the causes and indications of the cultural left’s collapse quite nicely and succinctly.
On the other hand, I’m not sure that the death of woke will necessarily be the panacea some might hope. As even Professor Kaufmann concedes, “What replaces progressivism as our cultural lodestar will become evident only in the fullness of time.” Unfortunately, if past is prologue, “progressivism’s” replacement may well be even worse.
If one looks at the totality of the history of the left—from its bloody birth in the Enlightenment and the French Revolution to the present—then neither the death of woke nor my apprehension about the future should come as much of a surprise. Since the beginning, the left has progressed through a series of conceptual epochs, each lasting a handful of decades, following similar patterns: intellectual inception followed by slow but sure growth, resulting, eventually, in cultural domination, and then a swift demise related to its inability to deliver upon the millenarian promises it made.
The rise and progression of the left is presaged by the Enlightenment and, especially, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the intellectual godfather of the left. The Enlightenment purposefully destroyed the old moral order, which had existed for roughly 2000 years, and attempted to replace it with a moral order based exclusively on reason, as opposed to the “superstitions” of the past. Given that the Enlightenment both caused and bled into the French Revolution, I think it’s fair to say that the post-Enlightenment period begins around 1799, with Napoleon’s ascent to power and the end of the revolution. This, then, can also be taken as the starting date for the First Epoch in the left as a political enterprise.
This First Epoch is distinguished mostly by its heterogeneity and, in some ways, its genial naivete. It saw the rise of Utopian Socialism in France and Great Britain and of philosophical leftism, primarily in Germany (Kant and Hegel, most notably). The ideas that dominated this epoch included ethical systems with foundations not derived from the supernatural and radical egalitarianism. Francois-Noel (“Gracchus”) Babeuf became the first true champion of the latter of these and, through the efforts and writings of Giuseppe Maria Lodovico Buonarroti, became an inspiration for the early communists and, in time, for Marx and Engels as well. The First Epoch is marked mostly by confusion, contradiction, and slow but sure formulation of a grand utopian scheme.
That basic, naive scheme failed to produce much by way of political reform, however, and by 1848, the men and women of Europe were tired, disappointed, and in the mood for radical change. From Napoleon’s ascent to the revolutions of 1848 and the concomitant publication of The Communist Manifesto was 49 years. During this period, the ideas constituting “the left” took form, namely its essential ethical justification and its basic economic scheme, but meaningful political progress remained elusive. And thus ends the First Epoch.
The Second Epoch in the evolution of the left can probably be said to start in 1867 with the publication of the first volume of Marx’s Kapital, his magnum opus, and with the subsequent rise of more overtly political and less strictly intellectual efforts to move the left’s agenda into the broader public domain. From 1867 on into the early twentieth century, the left was characterized by the dominance of Marxism (as described by Marx), as well as the rise of more practical competing and complementary efforts to turn the leftist vision into political reality (Syndicalism and Anarchy in Europe, Pragmatism and Progressivism in the United States). The Second Epoch was also, however, marked by the complete collapse of Marx’s vision with the onset of World War I. Marx had insisted that, under such circumstances, the “workers of the world” would “unite” and throw off their chains, choosing class solidarity over national allegiance. The Great War, of course, proved otherwise. Its onset, in 1914—47 years after the publication of Marx’s opus—signified the end of the Second Epoch, the epoch of Marx.
The Third Epoch can be said to start with the publication, in 1923, of György Lukács’s own magnum opus, History and Class Consciousness. Although there are many people and many works to pick from in this era, I’ll use Lukács and his book as the epochal marker because he is generally acknowledged to be the father of “cultural Marxism,” and it is generally considered to be his blueprint.
Industrialized Europe emerged from World War I shattered and broken, not just physically, but psychologically, emotionally, and most especially, spiritually. The new Europe was exhausted and scarred, increasingly frustrated with the old gods but far from enamored with the new ones. It rejected Marx openly, just as it rejected every teleological ethos.
As a result, nihilism replaced faith. Pessimism replaced hope. The “Ego” replaced everything else. Marx’s fears were realized, and his antagonist, Max Stirner, was proven prescient in his warnings about the “Ego’s” steadfastness.
In order to get the Marxist program back on track, Lukács—plus Gramsci, plus Adorno, et al.—had to fight back against the ascension of the ego, against the selfish rejection of communism for the satisfaction of the self. Cultural Marxism and its long march through the institutions constituted the plan for that fight.
This Third Epoch lasted only 41 years, however, and ended in 1964, when one of the cultural Marxists’ fellow travelers—Herbert Marcuse—simply conceded defeat. His book, One-Dimensional Man, was a eulogy for Lukácsian and Gramscian cultural Marxism. It was also a primal scream in frustration at the persistence of the ego (and the prescience of Stirner). Most notably, however, it was a blueprint in its own right for advancing the cause and promoting the revolutionary mindset.
Marcuse conceded that the capitalist system was simply too good at providing goods and services that made the masses comfortable and happy. It therefore deprived them of ever knowing or caring about their true oppressed consciousness. Workers had become one-dimensional consumers, distracted from their fate by their egos and the creature comforts of capitalism. As a result, Marcuse determined the left would have to recruit an entirely new revolutionary class to facilitate the revolution. He identified the socially oppressed—minorities, women, sexual subgroups, etc.—as this new revolutionary class.
Marcuse’s focus on identity evolved, over time, into political correctness and then into “woke,” which is our present-day plague.
This Fourth Epoch—the Marcusian Epoch—has been longer and more thoroughly culturally dominating than previous epochs, but as Eric Kaufmann and others have noted, it too is fatally flawed and bound to collapse. Its end may have been delayed, but it too was/is inevitable.
The real question at this point is what will come next. What will characterize the Fifth Epoch in the history of the left? I think a Fifth Epoch is unavoidable, largely because the moral and social foundations of Western Civilization, which were destroyed by the Enlightenment, remain in tatters. Indeed, they grow more and more tattered by the day. Marxism, per se, is no longer a real threat to the West, but then, it hasn’t been one in more than a century. The “left,” however, will adapt again, and it will morph to fill the voids left in Western Civilization by the Enlightenment.
In other words, celebrate the death of woke but brace yourself for whatever comes after it.
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