Column 05/17/2023: Varieties of Leftism

Varieties of Leftism

I recently finished a book on the French Syndicalist movement; around the same time, I have been reading "Distributist" columns from G.K. Chesterton as well as newspaper columns from the founder of so-called "Guild Socialism," A.J. Penty. All of this reflects a longstanding interest in what I would call the "non-Marxist Left"--or rather more precisely the "non-Marxist-Leninist Left," or even more precisely the history of various labor and anti-capitalist movements in the 19th and early 20th century, especially those that either preceded or avoided the final reduction of Leftism into Fabian-style democratic socialism and Soviet state socialism.

There are a lot of reasons I find these movements interesting: but the main one is that I think that there are many useful things to be learned from them about modernity, modern economics and society, and where to go from here. If the tendency of the Cold War was to reduce political and economic issues into an ideological, militarist, institutional binary, the tendency of the contemporary Internet age is to reduce those same issues to an ever-proliferating array of binary, absolute symbolic conflicts. As Chesterton argued, this is the real danger of competition, war, and conflict in human life: that they tend to make human life far more uniform than its need to be. After all, as Rene Girard pointed out, most conflicts are created precisely because two people are aiming at the same end, seeking the same desirable object. Fundamentally, conflict or competition is always and inevitably destructive of alternatives and diversity and complexity and fundamentally difference itself.

There is hardly a better example of this than Soviet Communism and American Capitalism. Before the Cold War, before the World Wars, the Left or labor and anti-capitalist movement was a vast, complex, feuding array of different fundamental beliefs and tactics: anarchists and syndicalists and distributists and "non-political" unionists and positivists and guild socialists and Fabians arguing against each other and against capitalists alike. Likewise, the European radical Right was a large and feuding array of Catholics and Calvinists and aristocrats and anti-aristocrat populists and monarchists and radical democrats and Nietzscheans and localists and agrarians and anarchists that overlapped significantly with the Left. Thanks to the Cold War, however, practically all these groups were suppressed, not by force, but simply by pressure, subsumed into the single ideological alternatives of "Communism" and "Capitalism." 

When the Cold War ended, alas, and that simple binary itself faded into the mist, Western political life was left as a very limited and very shallow debate among a few different interest groups that agreed with each on other on more or less 99% of political and economic questions, at least 50% of which would been absolutely astounding and shocking to any other society in history. And then that consensus itself fell to pieces, and we find ourselves in our current uncertain times.

Here, though, is the fundamental lesson that historical conflicts about the shape and tenor society have to teach us. As Chesterton argued, human social, political, and economic arrangements are first and foremost a matter of collective human intellect and will and effort: works of ingenuity and craft and creativity that we shape to serve certain purposes and embody certain values. And the truth that human history demonstrates beyond all doubt is that a vast number of possible arrangements are possible and have been considered desirable by different groups of people throughout time--and many, many more are possible in theory, and could be enacted in practice given sufficient will and desire. We are not trapped into a tiny range of political or economic alternatives by "natural" "scientific" forces; we simply find ourselves, for a variety of reasons, in one highly particular social or economic arrangement among many; and if we wished, we could change it. If we have made our bed badly, we can make it over again. 

All of this is another unnecessarily long intro. What I really wanted to do in this post was to offer a sort of syllabus or personality test of Leftism, presenting the main divisions within the tradition over which anti-capitalists once feuded. As I said earlier, "Leftism" is here a terribly imprecise term: the original Left-Right binary was a division created by and centered on the French Revolution and defined with reference to a few particular French institutions. It has since given way to an American political spectrum that is largely a matter of memes on the Internet. As will become clear, many of the fundamental questions involved in historical "Leftism" are as related if not more to questions on the political "Right," and indeed it is extremely difficult to clearly rule out historical "Right-wing" groups from this discourse. I myself prefer the term "anti-capitalist" and/or "radical" for my own beliefs; I have used "Leftism" here simply because it is a more commonly-used and so straightforward term for most people today.

Fundamentally, all the social and intellectual movements of the historical Left were united by some sort of unhappiness with 19th-20th century Western society, and a desire to alter it "radically," that is, in its roots and foundations. They were also united by a discomfort with "capitalism," or that legal and social order in which absolute private ownership over the means of production--land and factories and machines and workers--is allotted largely or entirely on the basis of the possession and use of liquid capital, in such a manner that society is clearly divided between a tiny minority of "owners" and a large mass of "proletariat," workers who sell their labor in exchange for a wage and who labor with the capital-owner's tools and means of production for the profit of the capital-owner. Historically, the emergence of this social order, in tandem with rapid technological change and industrialization, caused over the 19th and 20th centuries without a doubt the largest series of social and communal disruptions in the history of the human race. As the result of these disruptions, numerous groups were brought to fundamentally question their society, its powers, rulers, and underlying principles. 

That being said, this system and society can and could be opposed from any number of angles. And that is what I would like to chronicle here.

In doing so, I have attempted to lay out these divisions deliberately in terms of conflicts between paired positions. It should be noted, however, that these represent not so much binaries as polarities, and do not involve absolute logical contradiction: in most cases, then, there are not simply two binary extremes, but a great deal of potential positions in the middle.

Column 09/05/22: We Are All Fascists Now

We Are All Fascists Now

The funny thing about contemporary American politics is that everyone seems to watch and read news constantly but no one actually seems to process and remember it.

The President of the United States traveled to a historical patriotic site and delivered a rousing speech, on the eve of an important election to rally the base against his radical, violent opponents, miscreants opposed to American Democracy and all the principles and values and traditions this country is based on: freedom, liberty, truth, and justice for all. Accompanied prominently by members of the military, he described these monsters' wicked refusal to accept their election losses and willingness to resort to political violence and rioting and conspiracy--in the process demonizing and committing acts of violence and intimidation against law enforcement and government officials. Most fundamentally, he accused them of doubting the essential goodness of America and the American people and the American government and openly denying the crucial dogma that "America is the greatest nation on earth" by attacking the heroes and accomplishments of American history and tradition. To support these people and their beliefs and their efforts, the President declared, was to attack the very basis of American identity and Democracy and so for all intents and purposes to cease to be an American. Against this existential threat, the President promised to fight with all his might and all the power of the American government and law enforcement--so long, of course, as you vote for him and his party in the upcoming elections. 

(ahem)

Yes, I'm of course talking about President Trump's July 4th, 2020 Mount Rushmore rally against the "Radical Left" and Black Lives Matters protesters.

And yes, I'm also talking about President Biden's September 1st, 2022 Philadelphia speech against "MAGA Republicans" and Stop the Steal protesters. 

The similarities between the two speeches show, more clearly than anything else could, that we have entered into a new phase of American electoral politics: one absolutely defined by (1) a widespread crisis of legitimacy, (2) an incoherent, reactionary, nationalism, and (3) the amoral appeal to State power and violence against one's enemies. 

To recognize this symmetry is not to hold that the two sides are simply the same, in fundamental beliefs, principles, or goals. It is rather to acknowledge that, at least in mass-media electoral politics, both sides are responding to the same basic circumstances, and being shepherded, to the degree that each side loses its principles and is led and embodied by incoherent amoral media figures like Trump and Biden, toward the use of the same methods in response to these circumstances. 

Column 06/13/22: The Earth in Anarchy

The Earth in Anarchy

This is most likely the last thing I will ever write in this space on mass shootings.

This is not an issue I prefer to comment on for a very large number of reasons, the most emphatic of which is that it has become clear to me that it is precisely the writing and proclaiming and glorifying of such events that is most responsible for their continuation, as a virtually unique, imitative, mass-media-driven phenomenon. Mass shooters commit mass shootings first and foremost because they have heard and read about other mass shootings, have become deeply impressed by the cultural and social and political impact of such events, the fear and grief and anger they inspire, the iconic and symbolic nature of the killings, the manifestos and disaffection and claims and identities of the killers, and the deep, universally-acknowledged sense of meaningfulness about all the above, and so have decided to imitate them. The most directly impactful thing I, and probably most of you, can do to prevent mass shootings is to ignore them unless you are directly or indirectly affected by them. Even then, it is quite clear to me that the mass-media and political circus around such events deeply harms the actual victims of shootings, preventing them from grieving and moving forward by cynically channeling their grief into the news cycle. I have no desire to participate in any of the above, however remotely.

Nonetheless, in the current mass media landscape, such events as these are supposed to lead to conversations and policy debates about "gun control" and "gun violence." These conversations now commonly involve direct accusations of opponents being responsible for murder and the death of children, and lead, in practice, mostly to an increase in the generally violent valence of American society. 

Despite the above cautions, probably for the only time, is my own contribution to this discourse. It will not be repeated.

I should perhaps repeat at the outset that I do not own a gun, have no desire to own a gun, and in fact possess a fairly strong personal aversion to firearms, which was perhaps inherited from my maternal grandfather, who despite owning a firearm as a practical necessity (in his career as a cattle farmer), had a strong aversion to guns and avoided using them as much as possible.