Some more thoughts on the Left, the Right, the Center, and myself

[Raphael]

(I thought about reviving the old centrism thread for this post, but decided against it.)

(This might get a bit rambling.)

I've thought some more about my political views, and I'm now less sure about what words I should use than ever before. A while ago, for a while, I mistakenly saw myself as a centrist. But that was only because I had my problems with both the Left and the Right, not because I'd see them as equally bad, and not because I'd think that the best position is in the middle between them, either. More like, I see the Right as downright evil, and most of the Left as sometimes wrong. And people who support nationalizing the economy probably shouldn't call themselves centrist.

Anyway, on those issues where I dislike both the right-wing and the most common left-wing positions, it's generally not that I'm between those positions, it's that I'm somewhere else entirely. For instance, I try to be a universalist in a time when both the Left and the Right have their own preferred particularisms, and seem to disagree mainly on which particularisms should be supported. I try to be sceptical about tradition in a time when both the Left and the Right have their own preferred traditions, and seem to disagree mainly on whose traditions should be cherished, respected, and generally kept sacred. I try to be consistently anti-sociopath, while the Left and the Right both have issues where they support the interests of sociopaths - there are, however, a lot more issues where the Right does that than where the Left does. And I try to be consistently against the world's various blood-soaked butchers, while both the hard Left and the Right have their own preferred blood-soaked butchers (sometimes they're even the same ones).

And then there's the fact that I think that the Left's policy proposals on most issues, or at least on most domestic issues, are pretty great, but most of their collections of theory contain too many falsehoods and fallacies and are just not fit for purpose.

[Travis B.]

You remind me of why I became an anarchist as a teenager. I thought private capitalism was a failure, but was opposed to Communism because I thought of it as blood-soaked oppression. I also thought of social democracy as just a "kinder, gentler capitalism" that did not solve its fundamental problems. And I was opposed to democratic socialism because I thought "a government that can vote to give you socialism can also vote to take away socialism". And of course supporting the far-right was simply unthinkable. So to me the only solution was a form of socialism with no government to take it away from you, i.e. anarchism.

Of course, since then I have realized that what I pictured as "democratic socialism" was simply state capitalism combined with liberal democracy, and that democratic socialism need not involve government ownership of the means of production. If the workers directly own and manage the means of production themselves, not only is it truly socialist (unlike state capitalism), but also it is much harder for the government to take socialism away from the workers. Furthermore, if democratic socialism were based on directly democratic workers' councils, the workers would have to decide to take socialism away from themselves, unlike under traditional representative government where the politicians could simply decide to end socialism (yeah, you could vote against them, but that would be too late).

[malloc]

For instance, I try to be a universalist in a time when both the Left and the Right have their own preferred particularisms, and seem to disagree mainly on which particularisms should be supported. I try to be sceptical about tradition in a time when both the Left and the Right have their own preferred traditions, and seem to disagree mainly on whose traditions should be cherished, respected, and generally kept sacred. I try to be consistently anti-sociopath, while the Left and the Right both have issues where they support the interests of sociopaths - there are, however, a lot more issues where the Right does that than where the Left does. And I try to be consistently against the world's various blood-soaked butchers, while both the hard Left and the Right have their own preferred blood-soaked butchers (sometimes they're even the same ones).

That sounds rather like where I fall politically these days. That said, I definitely support the general principles of the Left even if many actual leftists have silly or problematic views.

[Travis B.]

About silly "leftists", though, my favorite kinds are, on one hand, the kind who have mindlessly bought into everything "natural" (ignoring minor things like the fact that things like arsenic pollution in water are completely natural), and, on the other hand, the kind who think that Joseph Stalin was a swell fellow and all criticisms of him are bourgeois capitalist lies or at least exaggerations.

[malloc]

Likewise I often see people on the Left claim that medieval peasants only worked four hours a day or that the Enlightenment invented racism. In their rush to critique capitalism, many people on the Left end up romanticizing pre-capitalist forms of exploitation and ideology.

[Travis B.]

Likewise I often see people on the Left claim that medieval peasants only worked four hours a day or that the Enlightenment invented racism. In their rush to critique capitalism, many people on the Left end up romanticizing pre-capitalist forms of exploitation and ideology.

That's another brand of silly "leftist", as opposed to the traditional Marxist kind who believes that capitalism is a necessary stage for bringing about Teh Revolution that cannot be skipped.

[Raphael]

and, on the other hand, the kind who think that Joseph Stalin was a swell fellow and all criticisms of him are bourgeois capitalist lies

Only tangentially related to that, I generally roll my eyes - at least inwardly - whenever I see or hear leftists talk about bourgeois this and bourgeois that. How many leftist activists of our time, at least in rich countries, are really from working-class backgrounds? And, arguably the real problem with capitalism is not that it is run by bourgeois people, but that, by impoverishing large numbers of people, it makes it impossible for those people to be bourgeois. And, I'd say the most important class conflict of our times is simply between the super-rich and everyone else - and the "everyone else" group includes a lot of people who, according to standard Marxist theory, are bourgeois or petty bourgeois or something like that.

[Travis B.]

and, on the other hand, the kind who think that Joseph Stalin was a swell fellow and all criticisms of him are bourgeois capitalist lies

Only tangentially related to that, I generally roll my eyes - at least inwardly - whenever I see or hear leftists talk about bourgeois this and bourgeois that. How many leftist activists of our time, at least in rich countries, are really from working-class backgrounds? And, arguably the real problem with capitalism is not that it is run by bourgeois people, but that, by impoverishing large numbers of people, it makes it impossible for those people to be bourgeois. And, I'd say the most important class conflict of our times is simply between the super-rich and everyone else - and the "everyone else" group includes a lot of people who, according to standard Marxist theory, are bourgeois or petty bourgeois or something like that.

My take on this nonsense is that fetishizing the traditional working class ignores the fact that many people like myself may be better-paid and more educated than the stereotypical working-class person, but fundamentally our lot really isn't any different. We still are workers within the capitalist system nonetheless. We still will have our place in the new society that replaces the old one rather than being refuse that will go the way of the dodo once capitalism is done with. Furthermore, on a more personal level, to me at least, the free software movement is one of the best examples today of "creating the new society in the shell of the old"; sure most free software developers aren't traditional working-class people, but that makes them no less capable of contributing to the creation of the new society.

On a more negative note, the people who prattle on about "bourgeois" this and "bourgeois" that often use the term "bourgeois" to promote a certain sort of social conservatism -- to them anything that does not fit their own stereotype of what the traditional working class is supposed to be is "bourgeois", cf. many Communists' usage of the word, past and present. This goes along with how for many Communists there is no place in Communism for LGBT people, as I have mentioned before. To be LGBT is to be "bourgeois" to them. Similarly, things like Jewishness are often seen as "bourgeois", cf. Stalinists' usage of the term "rootless cosmopolitans". And so on.

[zompist]

Only tangentially related to that, I generally roll my eyes - at least inwardly - whenever I see or hear leftists talk about bourgeois this and bourgeois that. How many leftist activists of our time, at least in rich countries, are really from working-class backgrounds? And, arguably the real problem with capitalism is not that it is run by bourgeois people, but that, by impoverishing large numbers of people, it makes it impossible for those people to be bourgeois. And, I'd say the most important class conflict of our times is simply between the super-rich and everyone else - and the "everyone else" group includes a lot of people who, according to standard Marxist theory, are bourgeois or petty bourgeois or something like that.

If I'm not mistaken, Marx actually agrees with you: the bourgeois, in classical Marxist terms, are those who own the means of production.

However, it's a very old word, and the early uses ("towndweller", "middle class") still survive, and affect Marxism as well. Unfortunately this makes "bourgeois" a weasel word. Even in your own paragraph above, to say nothing of the leftists you're criticizing, are you consistently using it to mean "plutocrats" or to mean "middle class"?

There' also "petty bourgeois", which Marx used for "small business owners, shopkeepers, small-scale merchants, semi-autonomous peasants, and artisans" (Wikipedia). These people do own their "means of production" but at a very small scale. Marxists tend to be hostile to this class (and in the USSR at least persecuted it), likely because they correctly assessed that this class has even more reactionary politics than the upper crust. Even today, in the US, half of upper-income voters are progressive, but small business owners are the solidest Republicans.

What Marx didn't really envision (to my knowledge) is that if you lift a class out of poverty, they are likely to end up conservative. Blue-collar workers in the US lean Republican. Even union workers (a minority of workers) were only 57% for Harris.

Also, FWIW, I don't think it is arguable that capitalism "impoverish[es] large numbers of people". If you look at at 1800, or 1848, or 1900, the majority of people in developed countries are far better off, and vast areas of the Third World are now prosperous rather than starving to death. Soviet and Chinese communism did improve the lot of their peoples, but that was mostly the effect of industrialization on very backward economies, and turned into stagnation (USSR) or repression (Maoist China). Even the mild socialism of Nehru's India produced only very slow development; what turned it and China into powerhouses was, frankly, more capitalism.

Which doesn't mean that "capitalism" is simply good— you have to ask which capitalism. 1950s America, 2020s America, 1950s France, 2020s Taiwan or Brazil or Denmark...?

[Travis B.]

For the reasons you give above, I think that the word 'bourgeois' is of little use, and should be put out of its misery. What Marxism properly calls the 'bourgeoisie' is better called the capitalist class, which conveniently avoids the issues with the term 'bourgeois'. Likewise the term 'petty bourgeoisie' can be explicitly referred to as small business owners, smallholders, artisans, and like, avoiding the issues with the term 'petty bourgeois'.

[Raphael]

However, it's a very old word, and the early uses ("towndweller", "middle class") still survive, and affect Marxism as well. Unfortunately this makes "bourgeois" a weasel word. Even in your own paragraph above, to say nothing of the leftists you're criticizing, are you consistently using it to mean "plutocrats" or to mean "middle class"?

Oh, in that paragraph, I'm definitely using it to mean "middle class". If it means "plutocrats", on the other hand, then I'm not sure it makes sense to speak of, for instance, "bourgeois culture" - are there really all that many aspects of culture, aside from owning yachts and stuff like that, that are unique to plutocrats?

There' also "petty bourgeois", which Marx used for "small business owners, shopkeepers, small-scale merchants, semi-autonomous peasants, and artisans" (Wikipedia). These people do own their "means of production" but at a very small scale. Marxists tend to be hostile to this class (and in the USSR at least persecuted it), likely because they correctly assessed that this class has even more reactionary politics than the upper crust. Even today, in the US, half of upper-income voters are progressive, but small business owners are the solidest Republicans.

Oh, thank you for the information. I had kind of vaguely assumed that the term meant simply "anyone who's neither working class nor rich", in which case it would include me.

As for the narrower meaning - ok, fair point, but I still suspect that Marxist strong hostility to the petty bourgeois is at least partly because a lot of Marxists in some times and places had started out as young people from a petty bourgeois background who were revolting against their surroundings.

Also, FWIW, I don't think it is arguable that capitalism "impoverish[es] large numbers of people". If you look at at 1800, or 1848, or 1900, the majority of people in developed countries are far better off, and vast areas of the Third World are now prosperous rather than starving to death. Soviet and Chinese communism did improve the lot of their peoples, but that was mostly the effect of industrialization on very backward economies, and turned into stagnation (USSR) or repression (Maoist China). Even the mild socialism of Nehru's India produced only very slow development; what turned it and China into powerhouses was, frankly, more capitalism.

Fair enough; I think I meant that under capitalism, people are poor who might not be poor in a hypothetical ideal society; and there generally seem to be more poor people under more purely capitalist variants of capitalism.

[jcb]

However, it's a very old word, and the early uses ("towndweller", "middle class") still survive, and affect Marxism as well. Unfortunately this makes "bourgeois" a weasel word. Even in your own paragraph above, to say nothing of the leftists you're criticizing, are you consistently using it to mean "plutocrats" or to mean "middle class"?

And what does "middle class" mean? That's arguably even more a weasel word than "bourgeois".

[Ares Land]

There is such a thing as 'the bourgeoisie', in the Marxist sense. But I like 'the 1% percent' better.

Come to think of it, I think the ideas I'm closest to are those of David Graeber anyway (though hopefully my outlook on life is more cheerful )

Likewise I often see people on the Left claim that medieval peasants only worked four hours a day or that the Enlightenment invented racism. In their rush to critique capitalism, many people on the Left end up romanticizing pre-capitalist forms of exploitation and ideology.

I have mixed feelings here. There were times and places where the medieval peasant lifestyle really wasn't a bad one (multiple factors here but the big one being epidemic); and it's worth pointing out that industrialization really could be a step down.
Using time off as an example: the four hours a day is basically a myth. There were periods where medieval workers got 40 days off, not counting Sundays; also typically nothing happened during the winter.
It is telling that modern society expects more work, in spite of incredible improvements in productivity. So the 'four hours a day' is a myth, but the sentiment is valid.

Also, FWIW, I don't think it is arguable that capitalism "impoverish[es] large numbers of people". If you look at at 1800, or 1848, or 1900, the majority of people in developed countries are far better off, and vast areas of the Third World are now prosperous rather than starving to death. Soviet and Chinese communism did improve the lot of their peoples, but that was mostly the effect of industrialization on very backward economies, and turned into stagnation (USSR) or repression (Maoist China). Even the mild socialism of Nehru's India produced only very slow development; what turned it and China into powerhouses was, frankly, more capitalism.

'Capitalism' is good for slogans but I think too vague for analysis. It might be helpful to unpack 'Capitalism' into components, and see which helped. I'd suggest new technology, trade, stable and reliable institutions, economics that allows innovation and feedback.
Soviet communism allowed only the technology; interestingly, so does Trump-era capitalism: we all know Trump doesn't understand trade; DOGE doesn't understand institutions, Peter Thiel stated competition is for losers (a common sentiment among plutocrats, I believe.)

[Mornche Geddick]

However, it's a very old word, and the early uses ("towndweller", "middle class") still survive, and affect Marxism as well. Unfortunately this makes "bourgeois" a weasel word. Even in your own paragraph above, to say nothing of the leftists you're criticizing, are you consistently using it to mean "plutocrats" or to mean "middle class"?

I've got a theory that as used it generally means the writer's parents.

[Raphael]

There is such a thing as 'the bourgeoisie', in the Marxist sense.

Well, do you use it in the sense of, "the people who own the world", or do you use it in the sense of, "everyone whose habits, manners, hobbies, and dialect are more stereotypically middle class than working class"? Or do you use a meaning somewhere in between those two?

This reminds me, years ago (I think) you posted somewhere on the ZBB that, at some point in the last decades of the 20th century, French feminists who had gotten sick of the attitude of all too many left-wing men of the time had come up with the quote "It takes as long to cook a steak for a revolutionary as for a bourgeois". What I find interesting about that quote is the binary between "bourgeois" and "revolutionary". If "bourgeois" is a class designation, why would having revolutionary political views keep you from being bourgeois? And, again, if "bourgeois" is a class designation, why would not having revolutionary political views turn you into a bourgeois if you're from a different class?

As a sidenote, if the revolutionary is as much into endlessly debating every aspect and detail of everything before coming to a conclusion as revolutionaries often are, it might well take a lot longer to cook a steak for a revolutionary than for a bourgeois.

[Ares Land]

There is such a thing as 'the bourgeoisie', in the Marxist sense.

Well, do you use it in the sense of, "the people who own the world", or do you use it in the sense of, "everyone whose habits, manners, hobbies, and dialect are more stereotypically middle class than working class"? Or do you use a meaning somewhere in between those two?

In the Marxist sense, it can only mean 'the former' Personally... I'd rather not use the word at all. I think at this point it's basically an insult.

This reminds me, years ago (I think) you posted somewhere on the ZBB that, at some point in the last decades of the 20th century, French feminists who had gotten sick of the attitude of all too many left-wing men of the time had come up with the quote "It takes as long to cook a steak for a revolutionary as for a bourgeois". What I find interesting about that quote is the binary between "bourgeois" and "revolutionary". If "bourgeois" is a class designation, why would having revolutionary political views keep you from being bourgeois? And, again, if "bourgeois" is a class designation, why would not having revolutionary political views turn you into a bourgeois if you're from a different class?

As a sidenote, if the revolutionary is as much into endlessly debating every aspect and detail of everything before coming to a conclusion as revolutionaries often are, it might well take a lot longer to cook a steak for a revolutionary than for a bourgeois.

That probably was me; I really like that slogan. It dates back to the May 1968 protests, and it's intended to mock, rather fiercely one of the huge blind spots of left-wing thought at the time, using the vocabulary that was in fashion at the time.
The student protesters in May 1968 were decidedly bourgeois (though there also was a huge working class movement that isn't talked about as much), revolutionary (I think Mao was all the rage) and ended up settling into a very bourgeois lifestyle (in all possible acceptations of the word.)

May 1968 turns out to be very relevant to this thread, in fact! There's a lot of irony in mostly upper class students being anti-establishment and ardent Maoists. Especially since they ended up being the establishment in the following decades.
Plus Mao was I think one of the worst regimes extant at the time, if not the actual worst -- and French Maoists would be found cheering for Pol Pot (even worse, IMO) a few years later before settling for the somewhat sedate charms of social democracy and the European Union.
And yet... I mean, in a way, they were right. They did move French society forward, from stuffy, dusty authoritarianism to something a lot more liveable. Life did improve, a lot, for the French working class after '68. A lot of that improvement was due to the working class (violent mass strikes, which we don't talk about as much, but were probably more important than the student movement) -- but the working class side of the movement wouldn't have got as much steam without support from the intellectuals. There's something inherently ridiculous about 60's/70's French intellectuals and perhaps the working class side of things feels more respectable; maybe it is, but it was also at the forefront of Stalinism at the time.

So a left-wing movement can be downright silly at times, or worrying ideologically, and yet turn out to be the right thing do, and to be correct in a deeper sense.

As an aside, the harsh judgement on 1968 comes from hindsight. Being a Maoist as a kid in 1968 with the information available wasn't unreasonable.

[Travis B.]

I am of the view that using 'bourgeois' to mean middle class and above is, umm, 'problematic' (please ignore for a second that the very word 'problematic' has its issues). As mentioned, there is nothing that stops you from being both 'bourgeois' in this sense of the word and a leftist (hell, Engels was a capitalist for that matter), or conversely there is nothing that makes you more likely to be a leftist by not being 'bourgeois' in this sense. And anyway, wouldn't we want everyone to be 'bourgeois' in this sense of the word? Sure leftists may have a tendency to fetishize the working class, but don't we want people to be able to collectively lift themselves out of that, and what proportion of leftists are truly working class in the first place?

[Raphael]

The student protesters in May 1968 were decidedly bourgeois (though there also was a huge working class movement that isn't talked about as much), revolutionary (I think Mao was all the rage) and ended up settling into a very bourgeois lifestyle (in all possible acceptations of the word.)

I think I vaguely remember reading somewhere long ago that supposedly, somewhere in his writings, Mao himself made a distinction between "class background" and "class position", and might have declared the latter to be more important. (That's my own English translation of what I remember from reading in German, so it's probably not the exact same as the terminology used in "official" English translations of Mao's works.) Well, Mao was, I think, a librarian by training, which is not exactly an industrial proletariat profession. Anyway, if that's true, it might partly explain his popularity among upper class students who wanted to be Marxists.

That said, while many '68 radicals came from the middle or upper class, and most probably ended up in the middle or upper class later, I don't think it's fair to dismiss them all as middle or upper class. As far as I can tell, universities in Western countries in the 1960s had their share of students who were the first generation in their family to go to university, such as my Mom.

May 1968 turns out to be very relevant to this thread, in fact! There's a lot of irony in mostly upper class students being anti-establishment and ardent Maoists. Especially since they ended up being the establishment in the following decades.
Plus Mao was I think one of the worst regimes extant at the time, if not the actual worst -- and French Maoists would be found cheering for Pol Pot (even worse, IMO) a few years later before settling for the somewhat sedate charms of social democracy and the European Union.
And yet... I mean, in a way, they were right. They did move French society forward, from stuffy, dusty authoritarianism to something a lot more liveable. Life did improve, a lot, for the French working class after '68. A lot of that improvement was due to the working class (violent mass strikes, which we don't talk about as much, but were probably more important than the student movement) -- but the working class side of the movement wouldn't have got as much steam without support from the intellectuals. There's something inherently ridiculous about 60's/70's French intellectuals and perhaps the working class side of things feels more respectable; maybe it is, but it was also at the forefront of Stalinism at the time.

So a left-wing movement can be downright silly at times, or worrying ideologically, and yet turn out to be the right thing do, and to be correct in a deeper sense.

As an aside, the harsh judgement on 1968 comes from hindsight. Being a Maoist as a kid in 1968 with the information available wasn't unreasonable.

Thank you for the analysis; I think that's mostly how people to the Left of conservatives in Germany usually evaluate '68, too.

(please ignore for a second that the very word 'problematic' has its issues)

I'd say that word can be useful if it's used with the meaning of "something in the grey area adjacent to 'bad', but not necessarily outright bad itself". It's useful to have a word ford that concept, and I can't think of any other. But if it's just used as a euphemism for "bad", it's pointless.

[Mornche Geddick]

Well, Mao was, I think, a librarian by training, which is not exactly an industrial proletariat profession. Anyway, if that's true, it might partly explain his popularity among upper class students who wanted to be Marxists.

Some more possibilities:

1. The Soviets had nukes and gulags. And they were (whisper) passé.
2. Maoism was exotic, new, and cool.
3. They didn't really know much about Maoism.

[Raphael]

Well, Mao was, I think, a librarian by training, which is not exactly an industrial proletariat profession. Anyway, if that's true, it might partly explain his popularity among upper class students who wanted to be Marxists.

Some more possibilities:

1. The Soviets had nukes and gulags. And they were (whisper) passé.
2. Maoism was exotic, new, and cool.
3. They didn't really know much about Maoism.

Exactly! I guess in the 1960s, the Soviet Block already struck young Western leftists as being as stuffy and square as the stuffiest and squarest parts of the Western World, except without consumer goods.