In deconstructive word jokes, circling like a therapy conversation in search of civilization's unconscious plan, Hägglund seeks to prove his theses.
The style is patient for me, with constant retakes and excited self-references.
More fundamentally worrying is Hägglund's messianic claim that alone among all people, living and dead, he has got everything right.
To the extent that there are people who do not share his analysis / values / goals - and I dare to promise that there are - for Martin Hägglund they do not seem to represent other opinions that deserve respect, or even opposing positions of power that must be met with political strategy.
Those who do not agree with Hägglundism have completely sonic faults, think wrong.
There is an intellectual totalitarian claim in Our only life that is repulsive.
The theses then.
Secular belief is preferable
to religious belief.
Hägglund's secular faith has the finite life in all its forms as the object of reverence and source of love, not any divinity that exists in eternity.
To be religious, Hägglund claims "is to regard our finitude as a deficiency, an illusion, or a decayed state".
I would argue that is a directly erroneous assumption.
A believing person may well think that the frail earth deserves all our love and care because it is in some sense God's creation.
That is probably why religious people so often engage strongly in the earthly.
(Hägglund responds to that objection characteristically condescendingly that it is because they in fact include a secular Hägglund belief without knowing about it.)
Society should use
people's lives instead of money as a basic unit of value.
Well, you can sit and think about it, the question is how it has practical consequences.
Hägglund presents both relevant - but very well-known - criticism of the capitalist system and a for me murky theory that the "real" value in the economy is the working hours of living people, not the price one manages to get in exchange for production.
While Hägglund worries about how right he is, the capitalists continue to gather profit and power in the really existing economy.
And that is the ownership power that all labor or left-wing politics must try to control.
As a political analysis, Our only life is completely useless.
"We" must reorganize
society into "democratic socialism".
When Hägglund describes his ideal society, it becomes pure imagination.
The entire planet earth will be reorganized into independent cooperatives with jointly owned means of production.
This Hägglund society form of society must be governed by an unspecified, constantly ongoing democratic process.
As something in between King Babar's Célésteville and a giant Christiania - or a one-party state.
He gives no clue as to how Hägglundism will free the bourgeoisie from their riches.
Nor how the ban on private means of production should be maintained.
It can take several generations to realize democratic socialism, writes Hägglund and seems to really mean it.
I want to argue: it will never happen.