Fighting the left: content vs. process
[Hat tip: commenter “AesopFan”.]
Capitalism, according to Marx, is filled with contradictions, all of which guarantee its eventual failure. One example is the belief that capitalists, seeking every greater profits, will increase the “immiseration” of the working class, which will in turn encourage “revolutionary consciousness,” leading to the downfall of the capitalist system. This leads to the idea of “heightening he contradictions” – encouraging matters so as to bring about the emergence of the glorious worker’s paradise even sooner. This involves activities – both propaganda and direct action – that increase anxiety and dissatisfaction among the workers while generating isolation, fear, and doubt in the targeted classes.
[This] is true of any…“senseless” or “irrational” leftist program. None of them, whether they involve introducing transsexualism to schools or placing jihadis in Congress, occurred by accident. They were meant to happen exactly the way they did, to heighten the contradictions.
How has conservatism responded? It hasn’t. In fact, there’s no sign that conservatives, mired in the Cold War interpretation of communism, have any idea that the concept [of “heightening the contradictions”] exists. The contradictions tactic is next to universal and ever-present in any leftist effort or scheme, but far from having workable countermeasures, traditional American conservatives have been utterly oblivious.
Open any conservative magazine, access any website, go through the archives of any conservative think tank, and you will find myriads of articles, blogs, and papers dealing with the issues mentioned above. All of them contain precise, carefully researched information, well-crafted arguments, all bulge with quotes from Tocqueville, Chesterton, and Russell Kirk. All of it is excellent of its kind, and all of it is utterly useless. Because that’s not where the battle is being fought. The Left isn’t interested in rational arguments, but in bringing the temple down.
What’s the solution? The answer is simplicity itself — argue the strategy. Instead of constructing lapidary responses, start out by stating bluntly and straightforwardly that this isn’t about transsexuals, or immigrants, or race, or whatever. What it’s about, first and foremost, is a method of attacking this country and its people, an effort to make an end run around the rules without admitting they’re doing any such thing. The record is clear that the Left doesn’t actually give a damn about blacks, or women, or anybody else. The record is clear that the left is not interested in solutions. Once that is made evident, the battle will be half won. You will immediately throw leftists on the defensive, forcing them into a position of having to prove their bona fides – which they will not be able to do. It will also open up the debate to past efforts of a similar type. The ball will be in their court, and they will fumble it, as they always do.
I disagree that conservative writing focuses entirely on the content of the argument (“precise, carefully researched information”). Yes indeed, a lot of that exists. But I’ve seen plenty of articles that do exactly what the author says they don’t do: argue the strategy (otherwise known as process). How many articles by conservative authors have you read, for example, that discuss the left’s Cloward-Piven strategy, which is similar to heightening the contradiction? I’ve read many. Actually, I’ve even written many (see this). And I’ve certainly heard politicians who say or read articles that state that the left is a threat to our entire way of life and traditional institutions and values, and to liberty.
The problem is actually deeper and more difficult to solve, and it has to do with another leftist strategy: the Gramscian march through the institutions. We’ve discussed that here, too, and it’s been talked about in many other venues as well. One of those institutions is education, and another big one is the press. Conservative writers are mainly read by already-conservative readers, so they’re essentially preaching to the choir. Most liberals I know have never read a conservative article or watched or listened to a conservative talk show in their lives. They shudder if you even suggest it. So how are they going to pay any attention to what conservatives write or conservatives say?
President Trump doesn’t seem to be into a lot of reading or writing about conservative philosophy about leftism, either. At least, I don’t think he is. But he feels some of it in his bones. And he’s a populist who has a huge Twitter following that is not controlled by the MSM or the school system. Therefore he’s able to reach more people than the more typical conservative writers who write those content and/or process articles about leftism.
It is also easier, much easier, for a person who has actually lived in a leftist regime such as Eastern Europe under the USSR to appreciate its perils and the lies inherent in its seductive call. Most Americans have no idea how this works, and that’s another reason the conservative message may tend to fall on deaf ears.
There’s nothing like personal experience. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
The importance of the “long march” (a term coined by the German Marxist Rudi Dutschke) cannot be overstated. Leftists are now (and have been for some time) fully in control of the commanding heights of the culture, most importantly now in Silicon Valley, and Big Tech is increasingly able to have its way, with its immense lobbying power in Washington and its vast resources, and yet subject to little substantive criticism (Senator Hawley being an honorable exception).
Some years ago a blogger I wasn’t familiar with posted a long, in-depth piece on why the Left is never satisfied. [I can’t find it any more.] His point — it is impossible to surrender enough to placate them. They always push harder and farther. There is no law, no policy that can make them happy because the process is the point. If you gave them everything they demand today, they’d be back demanding more tomorrow.
The most important reason is this calculated strategy designed to destroy. But there are other explanations as well. Even those fellow-travelling SJWs clueless about the ultimate leftist strategy of destruction have a need to keep pushing. Today we have a society where the demand for racism and sexism far outstrips the supply (per Instapundit IIRC). Just like every government program and bureaucracy ever created, the activists’ jobs are never done. Cannot ever be done.
And with the collapse of religious faith by the vast majority of liberals, where else would they find meaning in their lives? We know liberals give much less to charity. A big reason is that they admit in surveys that they feel their politics and voting satisfy their obligation to be moral. Without the next political cause, where do they find meaning? They already tend to be unhappy (according to surveys far more so than conservatives). If they weren’t making the rest of us miserable with their latest political crusade, they’d be even more miserable than they already are.
Years ago, friends who were refugees from the USSR, aka, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, introduced me to gun rights and the 2A. They were super worried about tyranny and believed Americans take liberty and freedom for granted.
I thought their fears were overblown. Seems they were right.
I haven’t done much research on their backgrounds, but two of Trump’s wives come from Communist countries. Melania’s father, Viktor Knavs, was a member of the Communist party in then-Yugoslavia. And I believe Don, Jr. talks about the influence of his yearly trips to his grandparents in the Czech Republic, and their experiences under the system, in his recent book.
All I am going to say is this …
Marx wrote his views in a library in London, England, in the midst of capitalism flourishing in Britain.
Also, all his degrees come from
German universities. All of them.
His philosophy, well repudiated, is from German/Anglo origins.
I hope you ate rotting in Hell, Marx, because your views led to millions upon millions of innocent deaths all over the world.
stan, a book by William Voegeli (Never Enough: America’s Limitless Welfare State)? Not a blogger, Voegeli, nor is his thesis precisely what you describe there, but the illimitedness seems akin, anyhow.
Seems almost as if in response to the AmericanThinker piece (but probably isn’t):
Mark Bauerlein, American Greatness: Polarization Narrative Is a Triumph for Leftism
rtwt
“ a person who has actually lived in a leftist regime such as Eastern Europe under the USSR to appreciate its perils and the lies inherent in its seductive call. ”
Therein lies the solution, at least at election time. Intellectual debate won’t move many people but show them bread lines and Bernie touting them and they’ll understand right away. Have short testimonials from people who’ve lived the lie and are thrilled to live here.
The schools are much harder but initiating a preference cascade so that ordinary people are willing to tell the SJWs to stuff it in no uncertain terms and at least as viciously would start to turn the tide. Increase the contradictions as the left likes to say.
America has had theoretically conservative Presidents for 24 of the last 40 years. Throw in the two years after the Contract With America win in 1994 and that’s 26 of the last 40 years when conservatism had as big a megaphone as you could want. Add in the Limbaugh revolution in talk radio and the rise of Fox News and I don’t think you can claim the the problem is an inability to get the message out,
The problem, as I think we can now see, is that the message has been too often carried by halfwits like Jonah Goldberg, grifters like Bill Kristol, and arrogant elitists like David French. The fault is not in our stars.
Mike
Most of us folks here in the USA have had a decent life especially those of us in our 70’s and above, we grew up in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s, not always easy but a lot of good things going on, at least until the later part of the 60’s when the commie enlightened people began tearing things apart and running our nation down. At a time when the doors were opening for non-whites they were also being shuttled into federal dependency and their numbers snowballed. Add in the mentally ill who were “set free” and the folks who are addicted to alcohol and drugs living on the streets as if they were in the bottom of a bird cage it’s easy for the left to point out the faults of modern civilization. I do blame the liberals for most all of it but I don’t have any idea how to bring people with multiple generations of disfunction up to speed.
While I won’t be here 30 years from now I think my kids who will be my age at that time and their children who will be adults coming into their prime years there will be so many challenges that we cannot imagine. Give Trump some credit for pushing for a better country while others just want to tell us how screwed up everything has become or it never was any good anyway. Old Orange Man has turned out to be a pleasant surprise and more than not just being Hillary.
Commies / socialists do NOT want solutions – they want power.
To tell others what to do, how to live, how to be “more moral”, altho w/o God.
Unfortunately, Central European ex-commie countries have plenty of folks who DID live under commies who like more about their (rosy! ?) memories of socialist poverty than their current capitalist non-wealthiness.
Lots of folks prefer being one among many, a vast majority, of “working poor” level of poverty, rather than among the many, perhaps not even a plurality but maybe 20-30%, of folks who are definitely worse off, relatively, under a capitalism & freedom that is creating lots of wealth.
To those with lots of envy of those others doing better, a socialist alternative can always be made to seem better than a reality where others have more status. Status is often more important than material possessions.
The point of this thread is about the tactics of changing hearts and minds. But Neo’s first excerpted paragraph mentions Marx theory’s claim of the inevitable demise of capitalism because the pursuit of profits will lead to the increasing immiseration of workers.
The history that I read about Andrew Carnegie and his desire to become the richest man in America sounds rather like the above theory. Drive the workers harder and pay them less. Mr. Frick was the “slave” driver. This was a tactic that Carnegie later came to regret, according to many historians.
The other story that comes to mind is Henry Ford, and his famous $5/day wage. Here is Wikipedia on that shock to the business world.
The Wikipedia excerpt is above average on the topic in that it mentions that competitors needed to attempt to match Ford’s move or lose workers. But the usual blather by historians is that Henry Ford paid his workers much more out of the goodness of his heart and so they could afford to buy his cars.
The thing that most historians never mention is that Ford’s manufacturing processes were just substantially superior to everybody else’s factories, in term of general efficiency and labor efficiency. If manual labor is dirt cheap, then who cares how good your labor efficiency is? However, if labor actually has a substantial cost, then those that use labor better have a market advantage. Ford could easily afford the new $5 wage, but it was a huge burden to everyone else. Old Henry Ford made Karl Marx roll over in his grave.
Unfortunately, Henry Ford taught much of his manufacturing expertise to William Knudsen and then didn’t treat Mr. Knudsen very well. Knudsen then turned Chevrolet into a manufacturing powerhouse.
This was one of the points in the article I cited that seemed to me to really describe today’s Democrats -Leftists (I used to mention them as 2 separate entities, but they are getting closer to unity in the Venn diagram).
“What it’s about, first and foremost, is a method of attacking this country and its people, an effort to make an end run around the rules without admitting they’re doing any such thing.”
While we’re on the subject of capitalism and socialists, Doc Zero said this:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1230140868406829056.html
In many ways, the bolded assertion is correct (think of public unions negotiating with bureaucrats for an increased share of taxpayers’ money), but they DO have skin in the game: the pay-offs they get for tilting the playing field in particular ways.
sdferr on February 20, 2020 at 6:40 pm said:
Seems almost as if in response to the AmericanThinker piece (but probably isn’t):
Mark Bauerlein, American Greatness: Polarization Narrative Is a Triumph for Leftism
* * *
Money quote:
Companion to the points Bauerlein made – look at the second graph.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/02/how-far-left-are-journalists.php
AesopFan. This was all spelled out by Hayek in his 1945 article “The Use of Knowledge in Society”.
https://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw.html
The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess. The economic problem of society is thus not merely a problem of how to allocate “given” resources—if “given” is taken to mean given to a single mind which deliberately solves the problem set by these “data.” It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only these individuals know. Or, to put it briefly, it is a problem of the utilization of knowledge which is not given to anyone in its totality.
The Democrats rushing to Socialism is absolutely freaking me out.
David Horowitz, “the issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.”
The end game is a perfect Communist society, which they will assure you, has just never been done right. Yes, it’s failed before, but this time we’ll get it right. The idea seems so right. Equality of outcomes. It’s so just, so fair. It’s a dream that, due to human nature, can never come true.
But there I go, arguing the issues. They don’t want to argue no stinking issues, they want to fundamentally change society. Uproot it and remake it. That is always the issue, no matter what they claim it is. Climate change, racism, gender ID, borders, prison reform, and on and on. Only on the down low, it’s never about those things. It’s always about the revolution.
“…done right…”
That’s why we should all be upbeat about China.
And Bernie.
They’ll get all the kinks out.
Eventually.
It can’t be otherwise. It’s just a matter of time. (And a few million, perhaps billion, deaths along with all the other incredible horrors, injustice, suffering, misery and destruction….)
But, as Hobsbawm declared, “So what? If it results in nirvana, then it’s all worth it!” (OK, I’m paraphrasing here.)
Because, yes! then we’ll have paradise on earth….
Leftist disguise their desire for power as a desire for justice. That is why none of what they insist on makes sense or actually improves anyone’s life. This is what must be exposed.
The aim of leftists is not to create harmony between people. Their aim is to tear down every system for agreement between people so that they can seize control in the vacuum they have created.
The ‘theory’, the ‘process’, the ‘end game’ – is always about the same thing. Power.
It is the oldest story.
Satan wasn’t thrown out of heaven for embezzling the celestial choir’s funds.
Neo
I do not know if you came across this story
“…blinded by ideology…”
Indeed. But he is conscious—at least!—of the fact that he must disguise it cleverly enough—Democratic Socialist!! (steak-eating vegetarian!!)—to make himself appear to be within the consensus (or what he tells himself is the consensus, the Overton window having shifted it leftward beyond recognition—for most sane people).
Perhaps he reasons that if it worked for Obama it should work for him….
(Of course, most of the Democratic candidates seem to have fallen “victim”—dear, cherished victimhood—to this pathetic self-deception, unless it’s just an act to win the nomination, whereupon they intend to reinvent themselves and revert to relative “normalcy”…)
None of this deceit and dishonesty may matter, however, if the Democratic “software” is up and running by November and enough dead people, along with other voters of questionable provenance, find the wherewithal to vote (and numerous times at that).
re Henry Ford: it was the superior manufacturing technology (including but not limited to the assembly line) that made it *possible* to establish the $5/day wage…what made it *necessary* was that people really, really did not like the assembly line work, and they had alternatives. Here’s an anonymous letter sent to Ford by a worker’s wife:
“The chain system you have is a slave driver! My God! Mr Ford. My husband has come home & thrown himself down and won’t eat his supper–so done out! Can’t it be remedied?…That $5 a day is a blessing–a bigger one than you know, but oh they earn it.”
There is a beneficent circle between high wages, on the one hand, and improved productivity, on the other. Currently, Trump is having some success with his drive to increase low-end wages; this may well squeeze profit margins in the near term but will lead to the installation of improved technology and processes. There are a lot of things that make sense to do when you have to pay $20/hour that are not economically justified at $12/hour.
re wages, turnover, and productivity, I recommend Zeynep Ton’s thought-provoking book The Good Jobs Strategy. Review here:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/60771.html
Chesterton was no defender of capitalism.
FB quote and link:
In the 1970s, I heard from some academics who had attended a conference in Moscow. I recall what they said on two topics: the surveillance state and on decrepitude.
1) Surveillance state. A Russian colleague from the conference got invited up to the hotel room of one of the visiting academics. Within a short time, the phone rang in the room- for the Russian. After a heated conversation- some shouting- the Russian hung up-visibly shaken- and immediately left the hotel room.
A Russian initiated a conversation with some of the conference members on the street. It wasn’t difficult to detect foreigners in Moscow, due to their clothing. The Russian was asked if he wasn’t afraid of the “organs” punishing him for talking with foreigners. “They can’t see everything,” was the reply. (But hotels for foreigners were intensely monitored.)
2) Decrepitude. One American academic at the conference was a bit of a Cold Warrior. He had been in the Army between his undergrad and grad years, and was still a member of the Reserves. He said that after seeing the decrepitude of Moscow- which was supposed to be the best of the Soviet Union- he no longer feared that the Russians would bury us.
David Foster,
Interesting. Some European auto manufacturers have utilized small assembly teams in lieu of conventional assembly lines. I’ve wondered how the totality of that works out.
Extreme dissatisfaction with factory work dates back to the Luddite movement. I have no idea what those jobs were like. However, it seems to me that at least part of that dissatisfaction was connected to the old jobs displaced, namely the cottage industry of handmade clothing items. And that cottage industry was predicated on a substantial marketplace of upper middle class or wealthy customers who could afford those pricey items.
TommyJay-There were called “dark Satanic mills” for a reason.
Which relates to the one and likely only thing Marx was right about-worker alienation. The period post-feudalism, pre-industrialization was in many ways the sweet spot of European history-people controlled their own destiny, not a lord…or a capitalist.
More to the point-the idea that capitalism is an unalloyed good is a libertarian idea-not a conservative one.
People have more stuff, more choices than ever, yet they are miserable-disconnected from the institutions that give life meaning-and the West’s birth rate is so low that Western culture may well die in a generation or two.
TommyJay…a lot of the Luddite movement resulted from craft workers, especially in textiles, who were worried about the loss of their jobs, or had already lost them. Most of the mill jobs were deskilled to some extent, and many could be done by women or children at low and even lower wages.
These was a very interesting book published in 1837, looking at the social and economic impact of the new technologies so far and speculating about the future. I reviewed it here:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/56406.html
Capitalism and socialism have in common the idea that society should be organized according to economic aims, rather than, say, the “Tory” pursuit of virtue.
Both systems reduce the individual to cogs in a machine-mere inputs. This is true even though capitalism makes them far more prosperous means to someone else’s ends than socialism does.
I think it is just total information flow. The capitalist system has all these people calculating what and how much to produce and, on the buyer side, what and how much to consume. And the miracle of prices which are the sum of trillions of little votes by both producer and buyer, and which convey this information. The information that is zooming around is thus thousands of times greater in a capitalist system than that which a central planner in a socialist system has available. Capitalism is thusly simply a smarter system. And it has not been designed; it is an emergent phenomenon of free peoples. What a gift!
John Salmon:
That’s quite a leap there.
People are unhappy and reproducing themselves less – and you think it’s because of capitalism?
I don’t see that at all. The most I would say is that capitalism hasn’t stopped them from that slide. I would also say that the rise of leftism and its attack on the family, the easy availability of sex outside marriage, the decline of religion and the lessening of economic reasons to have children have been far more instumental.
John Salmon:
Oh, and that “sweet spot”? Name the years, and describe exactly what life was like than. I would guess it involved the following, for the most part: rampant infant mortality and disease, women dying like flies in childbirth, subsistence farmers at the mercy of the vagaries of weather, widespread tenant farming, rotten teeth, etc. etc. etc..
The period post-feudalism, pre-industrialization was in many ways the sweet spot of European history-people controlled their own destiny, not a lord…or a capitalist.
There was no such period. Hereditary subjection wasn’t fully abolished in Russia until 1906. It wasn’t abolished in the Hapsburg dominions until 1848. It wasn’t abolished in Prussia until 1807 (and the Prussian peasantry was given no allodial rights over rustical lands, something the Hapsburg and Tsarist peasantry were given). An aspect of the political and social disputes in France during the latter part of the 18th century concerned the re-imposition of feudal dues which had fallen into desuetude. Britain had eliminated hereditary subjection, as did upland areas like Voralberg. If was common if not universal elsewhere. Note also the rationalization of land tenure in Britain during the 18th century. The peasantry may have been free of dues, but they didn’t have allodial rights over much when the enclosures were complete.
People working as artisans and merchants were a modest minority in Europe in 1750. Also, occupations were commonly controlled by guilds and guilds themselves were commonly organized into strata of master, journeyman, and apprentice. BTW, apprenticeships were commonly contracts of indenture.
Everyone is always controlled by circumstance and the necessity of earning a living. There’s nothing peculiarly nefarious about a ‘capitalist’. Occupational specialization allows efficiencies and welfare improvements. The financier provides credit, the ‘capitalist’ organizes production, and his employees or subcontractors produce the good or service in question. What’s your better idea?
“Some years ago a blogger I wasn’t familiar with posted a long, in-depth piece on why the Left is never satisfied.”
I don’t know the blogger you’re referring to; but I know the late libertarian journalist Joseph Sobran used to like to bug the Left with these questions: “When does the statism stop? That is, when do you decide, okay, enough it enough? When, for example, do you STOP raising taxes and STOP decreeing regulations?” Sobran claimed he could never get a straight answer. I can tell you from personal experience, neither can I.
My mother, who knew many former Soviets, told me not to be too worried about the Cold War because the USSR had not even gotten around to manufacturing sanitary napkins.
I have no idea how to check that:-)
Actually, checking it wasn’t that hard after all:
“While leaders were accumulating words about a bright future, people were accumulating flour and sugar, jars, cups, pantyhose, old bread, corks, rope, nails, plastic bags,” she writes. This desperate hoarding is, to her, the ultimate symbol of the failure of Communism — this, and its inability to provide something so basic as feminine hygiene products.
From a NY times review of the book “How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed,” by Slavenka Drakulic
https://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/19/books/her-life-through-their-eyes.html
“Leftist disguise their desire for power as a desire for justice.”
Good point, Molly Brown. I think many even believe it can achieve justice, which makes them even less receptive to counter facts and counter arguments.
“Leftists disguise their desire for power as a desire for justice.”
Whereas, politicians disguise their desire for money as a desire for helping their constituents.
An eye-opening essay for anyone still not clued in.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/02/22/legislative-business/
Read the detailed, and very clear, explanation of how bills are written and laws passed.
Then we get to the significance of the 2016 election, and the frantic attempts to annul it.
So: should we respond by creating a MAGA-style lobbyist line-up of bills (which have no heavy funding behind them); or burn down the entire corrupt process of legal bribery?
Is either option even feasible, or are there other approaches that would work?
One thing for sure: any Democrat president in 2020 (2024, 2028….) will return to the disrupted system; and (based on past form) most Republican presidents will as well.
An honest, competent news media cures many ills. Or at least reduces the ravages of the disease. Power corrupts.