I'm going to try and out-Freddie Freddie here and make a complaint about progressive language: in this case, his.
Why do leftists talk in a reifying way about "capital"? Everything that's described as an injustice perpetrated by "capital" is an injustice perpetrated by human beings against other human beings. It's not obvious to me that this usage helps make people more class-conscious; I think it may do the opposite.
Great piece, and I couldn't agree more. I've been trying to bring more awareness to this with my writing and guests on my podcast. Some great books are Batya Ungar-Sargon's new book Bad News about woke media and Vivek Ramaswamy's new book Woke Inc. They were both on the podcast and we chatted about how the culture wars are such a distraction from the class and wealth issues that are the real problems. But like you said, people would rather show up for stuff they can post to social media for some useless signaling rather than doing the real work.
I'm fairly progressive and seeing people not recognizing that they're wasting time, energy and resources on this stuff hurts my soul.
PS - following up about you coming on the podcast. shoot me an email at therewiredsoul@gmail.com <3
is capital the problem? seems more like corrupt government, law enforcement, and mass media with no investigative journalism; weak, poorly run unions; and uninformed, misdirected voters paying too much attention to censored social media.
capital tends to maximize profit and that has some very good results. but it must have countervailing forces that correct externalities, punish its excesses, and fight its evil tendencies to corrupt with bribery particularly.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! Saddest moment of my teaching career was last year when my students and I were watching video of a speech by Jesse Sharkey of the Chicago Teachers Union. One of my brightest and most committed "social justice" students remarked that he often found labor union rhetoric boring because "economic issues aren't sexy."
I personally just gave up. It was mostly out of disillusionment with the left. I'd like to say it was just the ever more ridiculous purity tests, virtue signaling, and identity politics, but even that doesn't go far enough. I think most leftists not only don't understand economics to get serious about reforms, most don't even bother with a serious study of core Marxist/socialist texts to even understand what they are supposedly advocating. Empty sloganeering plagues every aspect of today's left. People point out obvious injustices and churn out hot takes like that alone will make the issues go away. The saddest thing of all was that most of the people on the left had no idea what an alternative would look like, much less one they agreed on, and even less than that a realistic one. The left as it stands wouldn't know what to do with power if people gave it to them on a silver platter.
What do they say when you raise these points? What’s their justification?
Also, “ That those are utterly remote threats to the vast majority of poor and oppressed peoples in the United States today doesn’t seem to occur to them.”
I live in the South of the USA. Do you not want redneck readers? Why do people from NY stereotype people living in Louisiana or Georgia? (At least you didn't call us white trash like Erica Jong). I know Randy Newman wrote that song, but he wrote it for NYers to make fun of us.
The most culturally radical thing I do as a relatively conservative member of a college faculty is to teach my students to look for the economic underpinnings of the injustices we all decry. It’s clearly news to them that disadvantaged communities in the U.S.—viewed from an economic perspective—have profound interests (and experiences) in common that transcend the familiar dividing lines, but they are listening, learning, and discussing this paradox In our politics, which keeps me going.
> Most of them aren’t motivated by conservative cultural issues at all.
This is exactly right. They are motivated by work. And that's about it. Their political opinions come from the occasional political snippet that makes it onto their bloomberg terminal. Many of them can't be bothered to vote, let alone care about the latest cultural issues. And why would they? It doesn't matter.
I was one of them for a decade. I can't think of a single political conversation at work that lasted more than a minute.
I found the whole 1% versus 99% schtick regressive and unhelpful.
Who is in the 1%? The 'class enemies' who you want to focus on? Yes, OK. But also dentists working 60 hours weeks. Local guy who owns a gravel business and keeps roads paved. Owner of a modest sized family farm. Etc etc etc. Do we really want to send these kulaks to the gulag? Or pretend that is the plan?
The problem is that this type of conceptualization is way past its expiration date, which at the latest was the mid 20th century. Even C Wright Mills 75 years ago was able to come up with something that is more conceptually salient than what is being used now by the Bernie Left.
It would be best if we just admitted we are all neoliberal now. Europe is wholly neoliberal with rare examples (Norway's oil industry). Denmark is textbook neoliberal.
In reality, we are arguing whether as a neoliberal state public spending should be 49% of GDP versus 43%. To get up to that level of spending you have to have high marginal tax rates (>50%) not just for the top 20% but starting at MEDIAN incomes.
To get Americans to accept higher taxes you have to get them to trust the government more, and sorry we don't have the good governance that Scandinavia, Canada, Switzerland, or Australia do. Sorry, but if you look at New York commuter rails cost or what you get for spending $31k per public school student in Washington DC, or California that builds billion dollar trains to nowhere but can't keep roads paved, Americans are right to not want to send more money to the government.
I think the most palatable financial liberalism may come ultimately come from center right libertarians. Enough with the class conflict kabuki, enough with the racial identitarianism, enough with technocratic 'improvements' and upper middle class jobs programs to 'fight poverty.' Expand Medicaid, increase EITC, think about GBI, etc. etc. and other entitlements that go directly beneficiaries. Our country is getting wealthier and we can afford to share. But that is not what the Left is focusing on (SALT, teachers unions' demands, etc. etc.) while weighted down by decades of ideological baggage and derangement that no longer serves it.
Capital selects the activists it wants to fight against, as it has since at least the 60's. The ones who don't play ball end up dead, in jail, or isolated. It's not like there weren't people with a class analysis in Ferguson, but the hundreds of millions of donations didn't go to them. We've got a new generation of Jerry Rubins and Peter Camejos, but, as misguided as they are, we've also got millions of people talking in explicitly anti-business terms and hundreds of thousands organizing on anti-capitalist lines.
I'm not sure "the left" in the United States is really as out of step with its past as you say - has this "left" ever really been about some kind of fundamental opposition to capital as such?
This has been such a significant bummer to me since Occupy, honestly. There is no sense of solidarity across groups because someone unpleasant might benefit from something along with everyone else.
If you even try to talk about class and economics in certain spaces, people treat it like a dogwhistle, which is...well, it's something.
I've found that both liberals and conservatives alike are far more willing to express opposition to the 1% if you talk to them IRL. Social media turns everyone who uses it regularly into powerless losers. Capital gave up the trappings of power (fame) but kept the real power (money, government influence). It's working very well for them.
"I argued in my book, as did Richard Reeves in Dream Hoarders, the top 20% - an income range in which I myself reside - are in fact pulling away from the 80% to a degree that has profoundly deleterious effects on our society."
Yup. That's it's a feature, not a bug, that the movement looks down upon poor whites and doesn't oppose capitol. Capitol gives these people high-paying, low skill jobs that they use to buy their suburban house and SUV.
Ultimately, I don't think any remotely left-wing movement can be run by these people.
I'm going to try and out-Freddie Freddie here and make a complaint about progressive language: in this case, his.
Why do leftists talk in a reifying way about "capital"? Everything that's described as an injustice perpetrated by "capital" is an injustice perpetrated by human beings against other human beings. It's not obvious to me that this usage helps make people more class-conscious; I think it may do the opposite.
Great piece, and I couldn't agree more. I've been trying to bring more awareness to this with my writing and guests on my podcast. Some great books are Batya Ungar-Sargon's new book Bad News about woke media and Vivek Ramaswamy's new book Woke Inc. They were both on the podcast and we chatted about how the culture wars are such a distraction from the class and wealth issues that are the real problems. But like you said, people would rather show up for stuff they can post to social media for some useless signaling rather than doing the real work.
I'm fairly progressive and seeing people not recognizing that they're wasting time, energy and resources on this stuff hurts my soul.
PS - following up about you coming on the podcast. shoot me an email at therewiredsoul@gmail.com <3
is capital the problem? seems more like corrupt government, law enforcement, and mass media with no investigative journalism; weak, poorly run unions; and uninformed, misdirected voters paying too much attention to censored social media.
capital tends to maximize profit and that has some very good results. but it must have countervailing forces that correct externalities, punish its excesses, and fight its evil tendencies to corrupt with bribery particularly.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! Saddest moment of my teaching career was last year when my students and I were watching video of a speech by Jesse Sharkey of the Chicago Teachers Union. One of my brightest and most committed "social justice" students remarked that he often found labor union rhetoric boring because "economic issues aren't sexy."
*sigh*
I personally just gave up. It was mostly out of disillusionment with the left. I'd like to say it was just the ever more ridiculous purity tests, virtue signaling, and identity politics, but even that doesn't go far enough. I think most leftists not only don't understand economics to get serious about reforms, most don't even bother with a serious study of core Marxist/socialist texts to even understand what they are supposedly advocating. Empty sloganeering plagues every aspect of today's left. People point out obvious injustices and churn out hot takes like that alone will make the issues go away. The saddest thing of all was that most of the people on the left had no idea what an alternative would look like, much less one they agreed on, and even less than that a realistic one. The left as it stands wouldn't know what to do with power if people gave it to them on a silver platter.
What do they say when you raise these points? What’s their justification?
Also, “ That those are utterly remote threats to the vast majority of poor and oppressed peoples in the United States today doesn’t seem to occur to them.”
Then all is going according to plan.
https://youtu.be/YKUOB8MN4Kc
I live in the South of the USA. Do you not want redneck readers? Why do people from NY stereotype people living in Louisiana or Georgia? (At least you didn't call us white trash like Erica Jong). I know Randy Newman wrote that song, but he wrote it for NYers to make fun of us.
And it is dang hard to be an actuary.
The most culturally radical thing I do as a relatively conservative member of a college faculty is to teach my students to look for the economic underpinnings of the injustices we all decry. It’s clearly news to them that disadvantaged communities in the U.S.—viewed from an economic perspective—have profound interests (and experiences) in common that transcend the familiar dividing lines, but they are listening, learning, and discussing this paradox In our politics, which keeps me going.
> Most of them aren’t motivated by conservative cultural issues at all.
This is exactly right. They are motivated by work. And that's about it. Their political opinions come from the occasional political snippet that makes it onto their bloomberg terminal. Many of them can't be bothered to vote, let alone care about the latest cultural issues. And why would they? It doesn't matter.
I was one of them for a decade. I can't think of a single political conversation at work that lasted more than a minute.
I found the whole 1% versus 99% schtick regressive and unhelpful.
Who is in the 1%? The 'class enemies' who you want to focus on? Yes, OK. But also dentists working 60 hours weeks. Local guy who owns a gravel business and keeps roads paved. Owner of a modest sized family farm. Etc etc etc. Do we really want to send these kulaks to the gulag? Or pretend that is the plan?
The problem is that this type of conceptualization is way past its expiration date, which at the latest was the mid 20th century. Even C Wright Mills 75 years ago was able to come up with something that is more conceptually salient than what is being used now by the Bernie Left.
It would be best if we just admitted we are all neoliberal now. Europe is wholly neoliberal with rare examples (Norway's oil industry). Denmark is textbook neoliberal.
In reality, we are arguing whether as a neoliberal state public spending should be 49% of GDP versus 43%. To get up to that level of spending you have to have high marginal tax rates (>50%) not just for the top 20% but starting at MEDIAN incomes.
To get Americans to accept higher taxes you have to get them to trust the government more, and sorry we don't have the good governance that Scandinavia, Canada, Switzerland, or Australia do. Sorry, but if you look at New York commuter rails cost or what you get for spending $31k per public school student in Washington DC, or California that builds billion dollar trains to nowhere but can't keep roads paved, Americans are right to not want to send more money to the government.
I think the most palatable financial liberalism may come ultimately come from center right libertarians. Enough with the class conflict kabuki, enough with the racial identitarianism, enough with technocratic 'improvements' and upper middle class jobs programs to 'fight poverty.' Expand Medicaid, increase EITC, think about GBI, etc. etc. and other entitlements that go directly beneficiaries. Our country is getting wealthier and we can afford to share. But that is not what the Left is focusing on (SALT, teachers unions' demands, etc. etc.) while weighted down by decades of ideological baggage and derangement that no longer serves it.
Capital selects the activists it wants to fight against, as it has since at least the 60's. The ones who don't play ball end up dead, in jail, or isolated. It's not like there weren't people with a class analysis in Ferguson, but the hundreds of millions of donations didn't go to them. We've got a new generation of Jerry Rubins and Peter Camejos, but, as misguided as they are, we've also got millions of people talking in explicitly anti-business terms and hundreds of thousands organizing on anti-capitalist lines.
I'm not sure "the left" in the United States is really as out of step with its past as you say - has this "left" ever really been about some kind of fundamental opposition to capital as such?
This has been such a significant bummer to me since Occupy, honestly. There is no sense of solidarity across groups because someone unpleasant might benefit from something along with everyone else.
If you even try to talk about class and economics in certain spaces, people treat it like a dogwhistle, which is...well, it's something.
I've found that both liberals and conservatives alike are far more willing to express opposition to the 1% if you talk to them IRL. Social media turns everyone who uses it regularly into powerless losers. Capital gave up the trappings of power (fame) but kept the real power (money, government influence). It's working very well for them.
"I argued in my book, as did Richard Reeves in Dream Hoarders, the top 20% - an income range in which I myself reside - are in fact pulling away from the 80% to a degree that has profoundly deleterious effects on our society."
Yup. That's it's a feature, not a bug, that the movement looks down upon poor whites and doesn't oppose capitol. Capitol gives these people high-paying, low skill jobs that they use to buy their suburban house and SUV.
Ultimately, I don't think any remotely left-wing movement can be run by these people.