The Left Is Consuming Itself

Survival of the fittest is the driver of evolution and thus human minds including our capacity for learning and adaptability. We learn and adapt better than any other creature, some can suppress their drives to eat, reproduce, stay safe, live in groups, etc but most do not try. Groupishness did not replace individual ambition which shows in intra and intergroup behaviour.

Trade is more productive. With the growth of nations and government, mercantilism, ie, maximizing exports and minimizing imports became the norm. It is superficially plausible but suppliers screwed on terms and denied exports can’t buy imports so mercantilism is counterproductive. Competitors offer better terms leading to conflict, evasion, less innovation and lower profits. Many nations discovered that freer trade was easier, more profitable, productive and safer such as Athens, Carthage and Venice. This made merchants more powerful, more wealth created a leisured class producing better art, ideas and technology. Europe was composed of many competing nations, intellectuals and engineers could go where the environment was most conducive, and new ideas could spread across borders such as and due to printing. Eventually, significant innovations, especially in sea transport, weapons and the joint stock company led to European hegemony, the reformation and enlightenment.

The enlightenment was a rebellion against the senseless slaughter of religious wars, absolute monarchies and dogmatism of religious authorities and for the obvious benefits of free scientific enquiry and trade. Its values included seeking truth through science and tolerance while promoting individual liberty and human progress. There can be no freedom without economic freedom which leads to capitalism. Individuals are free but must not limit the same freedom in others. Enlightenment values are thus inseparable from capitalism, science, technological development and together form the basis of Western culture which is, with very few exceptions, the global norm.

Capitalism is private ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange and is more comprehensively successful than any other system at every level. The best way to meet one’s needs is not self-sufficiency because one cannot be good at everything one needs. Far better to specialise and exchange, especially using money. Barter worked fine in isolated villages but as market towns and cities grew so did capitalism and the use of money. In a city of many thousands rules, regulations and enforcement is needed, ie, capitalism.

Capitalism scales from a hawker selling ice cream on a corner to Apple.inc selling phones with 1000s of components bought from 100s of countries and sold to billions. All suppliers, elements and firms must balance income and expenditure so the economy as a whole does too. Profits can only be spent creating jobs and demand, saved creating capital for investment or taxed to supply services and protect the environment. With two or more in a market buyers choose so good, as defined by choice, replaces bad so value for money improves.

There is less criminality with capitalism because when it is safer and easier to get rich legally then illegal behaviour is less attractive and competitors and victims can inform the authorities or take legal action themselves. Most find that it is good for business to be reliable, fair and honest because most have a choice of supplier, customer, etc. A reputation or customer lost may never be retrieved. People can be good for business whatever their skin tone or creed so prejudice is bad for business. Everyone is a partner, supplier or customer all at once so all have some understanding of everybody else. This is why capitalist societies are more practical, civilized, tolerant, peaceful and productive.

Socialism is the product of centuries of utopian thinking. The French Revolution leaders promised equality, liberty and fraternity but delivered the opposite plus a total war on tradition, killing 2m leaving behind chaos and bloodshed. Marx thought communism a scientific project, a class struggle, the oppressed workers against the evil capitalists and that religion, morality and the family were tools of oppression so had to go too. Tearing down to build a new world became a principle of socialism. Marx promised utopia but whenever tried it produced tyranny, corruption, terror, mass murder and slavery discrediting Marxism. The horrors in France and Russia forced a rethink.

The Frankfurt School intellectuals led by Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse concluded that the problem was not just economics but culture. People lacked a socialist mindset because they are adapted to capitalist ways. Western traditions like Christianity, family, morality and patriotism underpin capitalism and enable people to resist revolution so socialists must break capitalism’s cultural foundations for success and governments can recruit industrialists, bankers, etc

In both Russia and China the government’s waged war on tradition, religion, attachment to the land and the family itself to create a new socialist mentality and culture. Our ‘Blob’ is trying to do it too, hence the war on enlightenment values, the nation state (by the EU), Brexit, hatred of Israel, farmers, patriotism and teachers telling pupils that ‘your parents won’t like this, but….’

Hence Rudy Dutschke’s maxim of the ‘long march through the institutions’, ie, socialists must populate government, education, media, etc to create a socialist mentality. Marcuse even argued for ‘repressive tolerance’, ie, that free speech should only be granted to the left, ie, modern-day cancel culture; so leftist demonstrators demand free speech for them but conduct institutional and media terrorism on opponents. This demonstrates a key weakness of Western culture; we tolerate the intolerant who seek to destroy tolerance itself.

Progressivism is a development of the Frankfurt school of thought. Intellectuals and trade unions, especially in the anglophone nations and Europe, have, since around 1918, been susceptible to socialism and subject to infiltration and propaganda by the Soviet Union. ‘Progress’ is meant to sound positive and good but it is progress to socialism. Other than those conquered by the Soviet Union during WW2, many European socialist governments have been elected aiming to bring more of the economy under government control, force greater redistribution, job security, control privately rented properties, improve public service, etc.

But all this requires a bigger and more powerful government, adding costs and legislation on firms and people. The state is, effectively, a monopoly. The elected government changes but the bureaucracy continues. Socialists assume that capitalism drives personal greed and ambition and that public sector workers are selfless public servants. The key limit on their functions is assumed to be funding, reinforced by compliant media because clients only care about delivery, few if any care about how. So there is almost no pressure for greater productivity or innovation, and they are not not in the interests of public sector bosses because it’s so much easier to bully governments to just pay more.

Superficially, socialism is attractive. In our families and immediate social lives we can be kind, share nicely and follow conventions around trade, work and cooperate with institutions and they treat us well, most of the time. We find that if we treat people well they’ll treat us well whatever their colour, origin, etc. Why not scale this up to nations? This pulls in the young, inexperienced and naive and the narrative is drummed in by the media, education and most governments. Evil and greedy people are characterised as victims of capitalism. The counter arguments are not stated and dismissed if raised. So a whole generation has known only this narrative and those with counter arguments, or even curious about counter arguments, are considered enemies of the people shut down or cancelled.

Those in positions of power have built their lives and careers around this narrative, owe everything to repeating and building on it so are in no position to counter it. Others [Only around 5 to 7% of the population] simply see it as a way to gain control and create the sort of societies they dream about.

But now that socialist ideology dominates institutions, those people need to manage economies, diplomacy, meet the needs and wants of 100s of millions of people and manage wars and terrorism having evaded or been denied the study of business, meritocracy, economics, critical thinking and reality itself, in favour of imagined problems around sexism, genderism, racism, imperialism, capitalism, etc, and failing catastrophically.

Most nations in Europe and the anglo-sphere are suffering huge problems of debt, dislocation, social disintegration, violence and terrorism. Living standards have collapsed, unemployment rising rapidly and social disintegration in once peaceful, law-abiding, high trust, safe cultures are driving the rise of a variety of nationalist, conservative and sometimes fascist movements that are poised to take over from the Socialist establishment. This terrifies socialists that spent decades building their power base and believed that their mission was a wholly moral, historic inevitability and don’t even understand what’s happening to them so are using all their powers over education, media, law, economics, etc to wheel out their stock tropes and delusions and failing.

The modern left has thus lost its mind. Reality has caught up with them. Every step is a retreat from reality, faith, family and community. Their insistence that a man can become a woman is ridiculed; posing every problem as one of race or oppression and allying with the most racist, totalitarian, intolerant terroristic entity in history cannot stand up to reality or reason. Their rejection of enlightenment values of seeking truth and goodness through evidence, reason and tolerance is shown to be counterproductive, destructive and encouraging evil, and does nothing to relieve the realities of want, conflict, belonging and meaning. Marxism and today’s left are deconstructing itself and not a moment too soon.

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This article (The Left Is Consuming Itself) was created and published by Free Speech Backlash and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Rob Mason