You've hit some of the nails right on their heads: the record of the Bush administration, the emotional tone of many Democrats focussing on inside-DC outrages, etc. Nevertheless I think you've missed something very big in dismissing the "this is not normal" reaction. You write "Marxism asserts the preeminence of fundamental economic stru…
You've hit some of the nails right on their heads: the record of the Bush administration, the emotional tone of many Democrats focussing on inside-DC outrages, etc. Nevertheless I think you've missed something very big in dismissing the "this is not normal" reaction. You write "Marxism asserts the preeminence of fundamental economic structures in the flow of history" as if that suffices to lay the basis of your argument. Instead it sounds eerily like Ernst Thaelmann in 1933, saying that ultimately victory would be assured because people work in factories.
History need not follow grand schema, particularly ones emerging from the miasma of idealist German philosophy. The future of our species can be decided by a quantum fluctuation in a $0.47 chip in a nuclear attack detection system.
The key problem with the liberal reaction is not so much that they exaggerate the possible looming catastrophes but that they fail to focus on the politically practical ways out. As you say, we need to focus on shared economic interests and not on splintering identities.
Nonetheless, let's look at deep causes. Are there any markers of something deep being "not normal"? Yes- declining life expectancy due to deaths of despair among less-educated whites, a huge proportion of the population. By "not normal" I mean that there are really no other recent effects like this in any major population worldwide, except in Russia after the fall of the USSR. A huge fraction of the population seems to be subjectively experiencing a collapse of their world of that type. It would be surprising if that did not result in political phenomena that were very "not normal".
The liberal sense that something is way off may turn out to capture what's important better than simple projection of the first 3 years Trump years onto a short-term consequences axis.
"I mean that there are really no other recent effects like this in any major population worldwide, except in Russia after the fall of the USSR."
That's because the same thing is happening in both place, albeit at different speeds: a collapsing empire's treasury is being raided by neoliberal oligarchs, while the rest of population suffers for it and yet does nothing, because they're too afraid of losing what little they still have (i.e. their lives) to go up against the might of the empire's internal security apparatuses.
re: traditionalism erodes, is displaced by postmodern relativism
Postmodern social conditions (globalization, network effects), the ultimate cause of the problems under discussion, was indeed caused by the post-WW2 shift from a productive economy (factory and farming) to a suburban consumer economy.
Techno-economic changes led to cultural changes.
In that sense, Marx, Freddie and social science (Gerhard Lenski) are correct.
You've hit some of the nails right on their heads: the record of the Bush administration, the emotional tone of many Democrats focussing on inside-DC outrages, etc. Nevertheless I think you've missed something very big in dismissing the "this is not normal" reaction. You write "Marxism asserts the preeminence of fundamental economic structures in the flow of history" as if that suffices to lay the basis of your argument. Instead it sounds eerily like Ernst Thaelmann in 1933, saying that ultimately victory would be assured because people work in factories.
History need not follow grand schema, particularly ones emerging from the miasma of idealist German philosophy. The future of our species can be decided by a quantum fluctuation in a $0.47 chip in a nuclear attack detection system.
The key problem with the liberal reaction is not so much that they exaggerate the possible looming catastrophes but that they fail to focus on the politically practical ways out. As you say, we need to focus on shared economic interests and not on splintering identities.
Nonetheless, let's look at deep causes. Are there any markers of something deep being "not normal"? Yes- declining life expectancy due to deaths of despair among less-educated whites, a huge proportion of the population. By "not normal" I mean that there are really no other recent effects like this in any major population worldwide, except in Russia after the fall of the USSR. A huge fraction of the population seems to be subjectively experiencing a collapse of their world of that type. It would be surprising if that did not result in political phenomena that were very "not normal".
The liberal sense that something is way off may turn out to capture what's important better than simple projection of the first 3 years Trump years onto a short-term consequences axis.
"I mean that there are really no other recent effects like this in any major population worldwide, except in Russia after the fall of the USSR."
That's because the same thing is happening in both place, albeit at different speeds: a collapsing empire's treasury is being raided by neoliberal oligarchs, while the rest of population suffers for it and yet does nothing, because they're too afraid of losing what little they still have (i.e. their lives) to go up against the might of the empire's internal security apparatuses.
re: traditionalism erodes, is displaced by postmodern relativism
Postmodern social conditions (globalization, network effects), the ultimate cause of the problems under discussion, was indeed caused by the post-WW2 shift from a productive economy (factory and farming) to a suburban consumer economy.
Techno-economic changes led to cultural changes.
In that sense, Marx, Freddie and social science (Gerhard Lenski) are correct.