This Week’s Posts
Monday, June 5th - Following the Word
A journey, a tall tale, a reverie, about the place of writing in the human world.
Wednesday, June 7th - Complexity is Good, Actually
Because apparently I have to affirmatively defend the value of complexity and of complicated relationships.
Friday, June 9th - The Real Media Bias is Writing for Each Other (But, Like, They're All Liberals, So... ) (subscriber only)
If your primary concern is playing for your peers, and all of your peers are liberal, your work is going to end up being liberal.
Also we covered the first couple chapters of Beloved in the book club.
From the Archives
Song of the Week
Non-Garbage Online Reading
Book Recommendation
Unlearning Marx: Why the Soviet Failure was a Triumph for Marx, Steve Paxton, 2021
I’m constantly asked for books that act as introduction to Marx or socialism, and lately I’ve been pushing this book on people. Some elements of it are fairly technical, but overall Paxton’s book is a remarkably effective explanation of the basic of Marxism, what it called for in a society, and why no 20th-century attempt at a communist government succeeded. As Paxton demonstrates, orthodox Marxist theory actually serves as a remarkably prescient explanation of why the Soviet project was bound to fail, had to fail. In the course of that demonstration, the book provides an excellent primer in the Marxist tradition and what it can tell us about the world today.
Comment of the Week
For a non-journalist like me, it's been eye opening, and very depressing, to see just how ruthlessly some journalists use Twitter to discourage their peers away from articles that could harm their personal political causes (Michael Hobbes flipping out whenever the Times runs an article on obesity written from a non-HAES perspective is the example that always comes to mind for me, but there are many others). After decades of dismissing conservative complaints about mainstream press bias, watching mainstream journalists interact with one another on Twitter has finally made me agree that, yes, there is a problem here. One that, at least in some places (NBC News, I'm looking at you), seems in the process of being reified under the guise of a "misinformation" beat. - Vlad the Inhaler
That’s it. See you next week.
I'll admit it. I LOLed. Turns out somebody wrote a whole book about how REAL socialism/communism/Marxism/whateverthefuckism has simply never been tried. All of them weirdly rapidly descend into wholesale slaughter. But that's because it was those backwards 20th century people. Now in the 21st century, watch whateverthefuckism blossom and not be at all about killing wrongthinkers. I know this ardent belief of "No True Scotsman" logical fallacy is part of deBoer's entire system of religious believes. But the idea that somebody would read some book, and say to themselves "Forget the killing fields of Cambodia, that was just wrong implementation of otherwise really awesome theory" is laughable. If somebody wants to study Marxism, they should start by going to a large grave full on unnamed bodies and think about that for a second.
Funny Marx book. Although there are no examples of that ideology working anywhere, here is another attempt to explain that the Marxists are smarter now and thus would be successful.
Ever heard the song with the lyrics "you got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them."?
The simple reason that Marxism fails is that it ignores human nature and corrupts human motivation. It is the fatal flaw in all collectivist ideologies. "From those that can to those that cannot" runs into the massive problem of becoming "from those that do, to those that do not." It destroys the meritocracy. It invites mediocrity. It invites laziness. Instead of real profound progress from innovation motivated by the pursuit of individual self interest, we get some half-baked placebo of state-funded science projects that might look to be competitive for a while with enough government spending and demand to perform at the end of a stick... but always eventually runs out of steam and crashes.
With Marxism, instead of motivation to produce, the motivation shifts to either staying below the radar of attention or advancing by licking boots.
We can see this playing out know with the cultural Marxist woke movement. Hiring and promoting because of gender, race and sexual orientation identity and eventually the organization is bloated with seat-sitters spying on their coworkers to file the next grievance claim. I talk to my peer corporate leaders and everyone has had it... looking for a time to purge the woke rot so we can all get back to work.
Nobody is arguing that capitalism is perfect. On the contrary, it is terribly flawed... especially the version of corporatism that the US has adopted. It is just that capitalism is still the best system ever devised in terms of the overall benefit to the human condition. Marxism is just a dream of the capitalist system class envy malcontents who ignore its consistent failure... including the fatality of millions it would result in before it collapses.