The American Left has decided with the kind of casual rationality one expects of a show like 'The Bachelor' that it wants socialism. Various stripes of Stupid-Americans, hangdog skeptics of 'capitalism', aging Marxist academics and various political activists are all occupying various floes of ice floating leftward on a river of sentiment for what it considers to be socialism. I was alerted to this in a rather shocking way the other day as Rep. Crenshaw had a difficult time explaining to Joe Rogan the difference between socialism and public service. Joe's definition was simple - if the government pays for it, then it is socialist. I was struck by the utter simplicity of Joe's position and the Texas Republican's stuttering inability to argue him away from it.
I've been knocking holes in the Left for years and in particular discovering from which pockets they pull their enormous moral confidence. The simple answer is that they believe that most human kindness is a result of humanism itself and that humanism is the basis of civilization. That humanism stands in opposition to capitalism, so they believe, and that business is ultimately mercantilist, in other words a zero-sum proposition. The state of this and other similar ideas has come to rest in what we have identified as Neo-Liberalism best exemplified during the Obama years. Let big business do what it must, generate evil profits, which our benevolent humanist government and taxation can readily convert into humanist foundations of a welfare state. It is a moral mission, a bit short of a crusade, but energized nonetheless.
I find fault with this left populism in that it's stupid and abandons what anyone who is not vapidly pro-business ought to be doing in good government, which in particular entails a labor agenda and an anti-trust agenda. But such things are not discussed rationally in American politics. Instead the populist Neo-Liberal agenda has been swamped by the Progressive agenda which is focused almost entirely on identity and making the personal political.
What is Marxism? From my POV it is three things, none of which America needs.
- Marxism requires a materialist view of the human being. It reduces a human being to a resource, an economic unit whose material needs, once satisfied, obviate the necessity for further concern.
- Marxism requires central economic planning, wage & price controls and the nationalization of the majority of and the eventual the totality of all means of economic production.
- Marxism requires the conceptualization of 'natural' antagonism and struggle between large classes of people.
That's all I have to say right now.
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