Identity politics destroyed the Democratic Party and now it is destroying the MAGAverse. Purity tests which are reflections of fear, hatred and retribution are useful in creating small coalitions of the like-minded in their insecurity, but cannot create a solid foundation for a successful society. Immigration, identitarian policy and contemptuous dismissal of those who fail the purity test dogma doomed the Democratic Party. They claimed to shun xenophobia but never did embrace xenophilia. They did not revere the other; their conduct was performative. Rather, they viewed celebrating the other as a useful tool by which they could claim moral superiority. The outcome of such psychological twists and turns was the adoption of a bizarre sort of self-loathing. Atoning for your status as an oppressive privileged white, was a means of attaining a strange sort of superiority. At least it was in certain liberal circles. Oikophobia is a strange philosophy which will not assure survival in the wild. Oikophobia does not pass the common sense test and much of America recognized it as illogical behavior. The MAGAverse is now engaging in Oikophilia but excluding anyone who does not pass their new purity tests. It is time for a change. How about an old concept which has at times offered opportunities even if all outcomes are not the same? Fair treatment for everyone. How about it? Combined with a serious commitment to civil behavior, fair treatment for everyone might have a chance at creating a foundation for a successful society.
Been there, done that. I was part of the New Left. According to Time Magazine, way back then, Herbert Marcuse was the Guru of the New Left. When I was arrested for protesting the Vietnam war I had his book One-Dimensional Man in hand.
LBJ won 61% in 1964 (best Dem showing in its 200 year history). Then the New Left took off and in 1972, Nixon one 60%. As our New Left candidate George McGovern said, "I opened the doors to the Dem party and 20 million walked out." (I checked the numbers, he was right -- about 40% of the Party.)
Now I still like some things about the New Left. But what we need is the the return of the true progressive Left tradition. That actually pre-dates the real progressive (1890-1920) TR etc. Here's the progressive tradition we should return to: Benjamin Franklin, A. Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, MLK, LBJ, Denmark, Obama. Some mistakes, but a hell of a lot of progress.
All we need to do to rejoin that tradition is shun left Extremism (not the people, just their ideas).
Both both DSA and CRT are utopian. And these new "progressives" follow the 3rd progressive party that was founded by the CPUSA as a front to run Henry Wallace in 1948. Utopianism is deadly.
I thought maybe not till I read their own literature about themselves. They are still mainly Marxist -- In about 1969, when one of their predecessor organizations (New American Movement) was just getting started I attended a couple of their classes in Marxist economics. If you know anything about Marxism you know the goal is communism which is a classic utopia -- similar to Thomas More's, the original. Here's how I recently explained DSA.
The moderate wing of DSA (40%) sounds much like Sanders—they don’t say what they mean by socialism. The centrist wing has three caucuses. Bread & Roses says “Ending capitalism will require mobilizing.” Reform & Revolution says, “We do not agree that capitalism can be reformed,” and adopts “the revolutionary socialist tradition of Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky." The Marxist Unity Group, “seeks to end the terrible reign of capitalism,” and replace our “slaver-capitalist Constitution.”
And after the Marxist center, wouldntcha know it, there’s a far left wing—lefter than Marxist-Leninist! Red Star will “abolish capitalism … to achieve communism,” and “only a revolution” can do the job. Red Star is more anti-American than pro-socialism. “Hamas is at the center … and all of our enemies—the US and Israel—are against it.”
Together, the Marxist center and far-left wings make up 60% of DSA, and a Red Star member is the DSA co-chair who gained the most votes in 2025.
P.S. It was the Red Star faction that un-endorsed AOC because she was not extreme enough.
It's a bit tricky. Took me a year+ to crack that puzzle back in 2016. Bernie is absolutely pretending to be a social Democrat. Here's the easiest way to see that can't be true: If he only wanted Denmark-style (social democratic) reforms, the worst possible thing to do would be to call such reform "Democratic Socialist" because "socialist" has been the main (and often successful) attack on such reforms of almost 100 years and he's lived through many such attacks.
But I only recently found the smoking gun showing that this deception is deliberate and strategic. It's from the main article on DSA history, posted on the DSA website:
"Sanders made clear that he opposed state ownership of corporations, but no mainstream reporter was astute enough to know that the particular socialist tradition that Sanders came out of favored worker, not state ownership, of most firms." -- So yes, he still favors completely overthrowing capitalism.
By only naming capitalist welfare reforms and speaking against state-ownership socialism he has convinced almost everyone that he is no longer a socialist while being careful never to say that (to avoid losing his real-socialist supporters). Here's the link to the quote:
I think that the best approach to policies beyond Social Democracy is found in the economists presentation of the "Solidarity Economy" which does focus on employee ownership. And this might work for the proposed city run grocery stores in food deserts in NYC. But in other areas the government must step in to provide goods and services that the private sector cannot. Two examples are medical care and low income housing.
So in my view Marxism is a critique of capitalism (the most powerful one ever developed and of great actuality). It is not, properly understood, a utopia.
Marxism is not a utopia. As everyone knows, even you, it's a theory. It includes a critique of capitalism, which points out that the distributional results are unfair. That's correct and completely trivial. But as to powerful, It's power was supposedly to point out that capitalism would collapse with some help from the workers, who would replace it with socialism, which would lead to Communism. Surely you know that much. And that really did not happen. In Germany and Italy the workers sided with the Nazis and Fascists and imprisoned and killed Marxists. A theory that gets things that backwards is not powerful, except in the sense of being able to mislead millions of people and cause millions of deaths. Socialism would be a good idea if it worked, but it doesn't. This is why Gramsci and Horkheimer (Critical Theory) invented their neo-Marxist theories in the 1920s and 1930s. This is where Critical Race Theory comes from. You are almost 100 years out of date, but pretty closely aligned with DSA. Their goal is a utopia, and they think they know a short-cut, but have made no progress in 175 years. They are hopeless Utopians.
Marxism does not rely on a notion of fairness, and is not primarily focused on distributional results. Its central point is that capitalism is a contradictory social system, not that it is unfair (a category that is foreign to Marx's thought). German and Italian fascism did not attract significant numbers of organized workers; especially the Italian version of fascism was fundamentally a bourgeois and petit-bourgeois organization. Indeed that is one reason why these movements were so violent: because they could not really win sufficient mass electoral support. Gramsci had no intellectual connection with the movement described as critical theory which of course comes out of Germany and is deeply indebted to Lukács: not at all Gramsci. Critical Race Theory has absolutely no connection to any of this. It is a liberal/bourgeois theory emerging primarily in law schools. More recently one might point out that capitalism has been doing very, very poorly by its own standards for the last forty years or so. So one wonders, whence your confidence in the durability of capitalism? It hasn't been around for that long. Is there a reason to think that it is eternal?
Crenshaw, who named CRT has says it takes CT as given. She is likely referring only to the German strain as you say. But many in the CRT movement follow Gramsci, for example Alicia Garza is strictly a Gramsci follower. Lots of CRT identity politics has infiltrated DSA. Far left ideology has become a total hodge podge. You seem to be some kind of purist version of a Marxist, trying to hold strictly to Marxist texts. For example thinking Marxism has nothing to do with fairness because Marx did use that concept, and ignoring the fact that every one thinks in those terms regarding capitalism, socialism and the like. What do you think Bernie Sanders is selling? You need to try thinking for yourself. You would obviously be quite a capable thinker if you did.
Excellent and hard hitting piece. But one element is missing. Covid authoritarian policies. Left wing pundits seem terrified to touch this one. Texeira alluded to the covid19 systemic breakdown in the intro, he didnt go any further.
Everyone recognizes that "trust" was lost during the covid years. Yeah, no sh*t. Do y'all remember : Lockdowns.. Businesses shuttered... Government checks sent out to everyone which ignited inflation... Schools closed for 2 years in blue cities... First graders expected to learn on zoom..( Of course the most vulnerable kids were hurt the most- and the lefties didn't care).
Masks were mandated although we were regularly treated to the spectacle of our elites gathering without masks eve early on when the pandemic was supposedly so dreadfully dangerous ( among the mask and distancing violators: Gavin Newsom, the Johnson government, Niall Ferguson the British pandemic scientist who modeled the expected death toll).
Then, it's the get out of jail card we knew was coming...Big pharma rolls out a brand new vaccine technology that the NY Times trumpets (front page) as 98% effective. Its mandated, even for pregnant women and young people. Natural immunity is ignored. The vaccine doesnt prevent infection or transmission. Lots of people get bad side effects, including myocarditis and heart attacks.
Through all this authoritarian nightmare, the "experts" were repeatedly wrong, but they never admitted or apologized. Once again, as with climate change extremism, as with mass immigration, who was pushing back against covid extremism?? The right wing populists!
"Niall Ferguson the British pandemic scientist"? Are you quite sure about that?
Looking around the world, responses to the pandemic were unrelated to the colour of the government in power. Even in the US, the first year was under Trump 1.
The vaccine was a success because natural immunity wasn't enough for many people, witness the chaos in ICUs around the world. Nobody made the claim that vaccines prevent transmission, and even statements from Biden stated that they wouldn't (though, to be fair, his statements often said a number of different things in the same speech that were contradictory - it's kind of concerning that it's been 10 years since the richest nation on earth has had a president who could string 2 coherent sentences together).
Can you tell on which issues these experts were proven definitively wrong and the conspiracy theorists were correct on covid? Similarly for climate change - few experts have used data to suggest that the earth would become uninhabitable. However, changes in weather patterns (generally making extreme events more extreme and more common, warming oceans, rapidly shrinking glaciers etc etc were predicted and are leading to a general enshittification of the planet. Where were the climate change denialists correct in this area?
Sorry that was Neil Ferguson, (not Niall ), the British epidemiologist who was responsible for modeling the scary death tolls for the new coronavirus. He was a member of SAGE the group of high level scientists advising the British government During the early and very strict lockdown period in Britain he was caught violating lockdown rules by sneaking out to have sex with his mistress.
Please see the Great Barrington Declaration for more about what should have happened during covid.. And yes, the NY Times did have a headline saying the new covid vaccine was 98% effective. There are literally dozens things that the "conspiracy theorists" ( not sure what that even means anymore) were right about. Here is one ( since you asked). The novel coronavirus leaked from a lab in Wuhan where gain of function research on coronviruses was being carried out. That was called a racist conspiracy theory in the beginning
Regarding the origin of the virus, there is no convincing evidence that it was a lab leak and nor is there certainty that it came from a wet market in Wuhan. The data lie more in favour of the latter, but we'll never know for sure. Anybody who says they are sure one way or the other is not being honest.
As for what a conspiracy theory is, I like to define it as when people have avoided the scientific method, which always goes for the simplest possible explanation based on the available data, and instead add in additional unnecessary, and usually irrational, assumptions to arrive at a conclusion that usually involves a cover up of some kind by a mysterious elite.
Agree! And the simplest explanation for the new covid virus was that it came from the Wuhan lab which had been doing experiments on novel coronaviruses. Columbia professor Jeffrey Sachs quit the offical commission, of which he was the head, to investigate the origins because he said he was being lied to. The furin cleavage site found in the virus DNA was considered by most experts to be proof that this virus was the result of genetic alterations in a lab. Simplest explanation is that it was.
I suggest that you look at the various original papers analyzing the sequences of viruses and then come back and tell me that you have definitive proof that it was a lab leak and not a zoonotic event. As for "Rand Paul wrote a whole book about this" - that's not going to convince anybody.
What came out in the Fauci emails was that most leading scientists thought it was from GOF research and Fauci instructed them to write a paper debunking that. This was covered in a New Yorker article. For what its worth this is what Googles chat GPT says to the question: Was Covid virus the result of a lab leak? Answer:
That’s a very good and important question — one that scientists, intelligence agencies, and public-health organizations continue to debate. The short answer is: we do not yet know for sure — the evidence does not conclusively prove that COVID-19 was leaked from a lab, but it also does not definitively rule that possibility out. What we do know, and how experts currently view the competing ideas:
So... You asked originally which conspiracy theory was debunked. The very idea that the covid virus came from a lab was labelled a conspiracy theory by major legacy media - a racist conspiracy theory!
The problem with this is very simple. Internationalism is not negotiable. The left has never done well by capitulating to exclusivist nationalism. Remember August 1914 and Burgfried/Union Sacree. So as sensible as this sounds, it is actually a recipe for defeat and humiliation. The way forward is another: an actual social vision.
How do you propose to put this "actual social vision" together and sell it to a durable majority of voters, in the United States or anywhere else? If you manage to succeed, how do you propose to maintain your accomplishment without resort to coercion?
This is not a snarky question, it's an honest one based on the observation that many serious minds since the Industrial Revolution have tried to tackle exactly this problem; none were able to succeed without resort to violent coercion, and none who succeeded by resorting to violence and repression were able to abandon it later.
The US left needs to make a robust case for democratic control over investment decisions: something like what the country did during the Second World War, but on much broader scale and with much greater social input. It is not enough to shower the private sector with cheap funds a la Biden. Personally I do not think Keynesianism (as distinct from what Keynes actually thought) combined with a softer version of Trumpian xenophobia is going to work. It has not worked up until now. The problem of the left, in my opinion, is not that it has been captured by culture war politics; this is mostly a minor irritant and is largely the result of a more fundamental weakness: that the left does not have its own economic and social vision (its geopolitics are also an incoherent disaster). The consequence of this lack is an obsessive focus on fairness, which is a weak and not particularly politically effective idea.
Absent an existential crisis on a par with the Second World War itself, I don't see any way for "The US left (or anyone else) to make a robust case for democratic control over investment decisions". Even presuming that the electorate could be convinced that it was faced with that kind of crisis, I don't see any way to consolidate sufficiently broad support for a command economy - and we should be clear that that is what you're talking about - for longer than the duration of the emergency. Beyond that, we start discussing an Orwellian world. Or a Stalinist one.
Two points: I think it's very likely the existential crisis is coming. Consider the massive overinvestment in AI, the infection of the entire financial system with junk assets, spiraling inequality, continued sluggish growth, and rising un and above all underemployment. Second, the question of the command economy in a sense is a moot one. The choice is not between a "command economy" and something else, but a "command economy" with democratic control or one entirely in the service of the wealthy and well connected as we have now. The nature of contemporary capitalism is such that it has already created substantial elements of command economy, a fact only accelerated and rendered more inegalitarian under Trump.
I don't understand what "internationalism" might be. Nation states have democratic political systems. They are imperfect. But what does that look like internationally? The current EU government with an unelected commission that makes rules and laws is an good example of totally undemocratic and hated post national experiment. By "intenationalism" do you mean the USA being the world's policeman?
Nationalism combined with aggressive militarism is bad. ( But the USA has been aggressive militarily for 50 years, while supposedly being "internationalist). Isn't nationalism just putting your own house in order and taking care of your own people?
Internationalism is not imperialism or the hegemony of a great power. It means a real structure of international cooperation, and certainly the greatest possible freedom of movement for people (not necessarily for capital). Nationalism obviously is a very complex phenomenon which can be combined with internationalism (e.g. France). That is why I was careful to specify that "exclusivist nationalism" is the problem. My point is simply that the idea that the left should embrace the immigration politics of the right, a politics that is saturated with racism and is also hypocritical, is disastrously wrong. There is also very little evidence to think that this is the royal road back to political relevance. Does anyone really believe that if Biden had been tougher on the border he would beaten Trump? I would hope not. Teixera is no fool, but remember this is the same man who predicted a "permanent democratic majority" a few years back.
Biden had other problems besides the border. You are quick to dismiss all critics of mass migration and borderless world as racist. Lets talk about Europe where I lived for 20 years and have family. A large percentage of Europeans are sceptical of high levels of immigration. They rightly understand that a strong social safety net and a social welfare system is not compatible with mass migration. Furthermore, in todays world, any able bodied African can get to Europe if they can scrape together the money. The rational economic decision for any able bodied African is to go to Europe. Thats tens or even hundreds of millions of people. I don't see how that makes sense - and apparently most Europeans don't either.
I agree with the basic policy outline. What I wonder is whether it still would be leftist. And as such, could we convince people who are steeped in Marxism and related dogmas that they have been wrong their entire lives--even if they have been?
Hahaha....."Marxism and related dogmas". But of course right wing social democracy (an utterly failed project if there ever was one) is not a dogma? Or how about the "dogma" of centrism (Clinton, Obama etc)? Or perhaps the utterly failed dogma of neoliberalism renounced now even by its former acolytes like Brad De Long?
If I understand Teixeira correctly, the new left would be (A) more pragmatic and less dogmatic and (B) approximately right rather than exactly wrong. As a child of the mid-20th century, I would hardly recognize the new and improved left as being left of some imaginary center.
"Hard economic times and slow economic growth typically generate pessimism about the future and fear of change, not broad support for more democracy and social reform. In contrast, when times are good—when the economy is expanding and living standards are steadily rising for most of the population—people see better opportunities for themselves and are more inclined toward social generosity, tolerance, and collective advance."
It may be just a coincidence, but an aversion to conditions in which living standards are steadily rising and people can see better opportunities for themselves is an earmark of Leninist leftists, for whom such conditions pose an obstacle to revolution.
There’s much to agree with here but the fear of the tech oligarchy by both right and left is truly justified. I don’t see how one can be both a tech optimist (aka utopian) and a real optimist as Ruy argues. His criticisms are certainly valid but proposals lacking.
I emphatically disagree about the objection to 'equity': 'Lack of proportional representation of racial groups in desirable positions or achievements is taken as evidence...Therefore, the outcomes should be equalized regardless of merit'. Equal representation, 'equity', isn't the goal but significant disparities are compelling evidence for ongoing discrimination--largely unintentional. As a women, there are a great many jobs for which I wouldn't even be considered. And it isn't that women don't want to do those jobs--they just know that they'll be wasting their time applying, and may just be embarrassed.
And suppose you're turned down for a job. How can you provide compelling evidence that it was because you were a woman applying for a 'man's job' if not by noting that few if any women worked at that job? The issue isn't 'equity', isn't equal representation, or 'diversity': it's giving women a fair shot at getting non-traditional jobs. And that means looking at past hiring practices and the proportion of women in an occupation.
(1) I applied for a job driving a machine to sweep a factory floor. On the phone the person asked me whether I was applying for the job for myself. I said I was. He excused himself and, after a sotto voce conversation said the job wasn't available any longer.
(2) I applied for a job as a dishwasher. The guy said 'the job isn't for you' because it would involve 'lifting heavy trays'. I took this case to the EEOC and won a token settlement.
(3) Not my case but more recently a woman who needed to get trained for reasonably well-paying work quickly took a 6 month course to train as a truck driver. She was turned down for trucker jobs because the firms, afraid of sexual harassment suits, insisted that they could only take on women to train if there was a woman available to train them. And, since women are only 3% of the occupation women to do the training weren't widely available.
I support WINTER (Women in Non-Traditional Employment Roles) https://www.winterwomen.org/ which runs pre-apprenticeship training to get women into apprenticeships for construction trades. I'm not interested in college grad jobs, where women are doing just fine.
I agree that women are likely discriminated against for the roles you are referring to and that is something we need to fix. However, most of the focus of "equity" has been on CEO roles and high paying roles in finance and maybe tech and computer science. It's hard to believe that women applying for these roles are discriminated against, in fact at this point they are likely being privileged.
I agree. At my university there's affirmative action for faculty positions but none for staff positions, which are highly sex segregated. And similarly for student work-study positions. I'm not interested in the high end. But please note 2/3 of the population are competing for jobs at the low end.
Identity politics destroyed the Democratic Party and now it is destroying the MAGAverse. Purity tests which are reflections of fear, hatred and retribution are useful in creating small coalitions of the like-minded in their insecurity, but cannot create a solid foundation for a successful society. Immigration, identitarian policy and contemptuous dismissal of those who fail the purity test dogma doomed the Democratic Party. They claimed to shun xenophobia but never did embrace xenophilia. They did not revere the other; their conduct was performative. Rather, they viewed celebrating the other as a useful tool by which they could claim moral superiority. The outcome of such psychological twists and turns was the adoption of a bizarre sort of self-loathing. Atoning for your status as an oppressive privileged white, was a means of attaining a strange sort of superiority. At least it was in certain liberal circles. Oikophobia is a strange philosophy which will not assure survival in the wild. Oikophobia does not pass the common sense test and much of America recognized it as illogical behavior. The MAGAverse is now engaging in Oikophilia but excluding anyone who does not pass their new purity tests. It is time for a change. How about an old concept which has at times offered opportunities even if all outcomes are not the same? Fair treatment for everyone. How about it? Combined with a serious commitment to civil behavior, fair treatment for everyone might have a chance at creating a foundation for a successful society.
Thanks for the like. How did you even find this? I posted it so many words (and days) ago.
Been there, done that. I was part of the New Left. According to Time Magazine, way back then, Herbert Marcuse was the Guru of the New Left. When I was arrested for protesting the Vietnam war I had his book One-Dimensional Man in hand.
LBJ won 61% in 1964 (best Dem showing in its 200 year history). Then the New Left took off and in 1972, Nixon one 60%. As our New Left candidate George McGovern said, "I opened the doors to the Dem party and 20 million walked out." (I checked the numbers, he was right -- about 40% of the Party.)
Now I still like some things about the New Left. But what we need is the the return of the true progressive Left tradition. That actually pre-dates the real progressive (1890-1920) TR etc. Here's the progressive tradition we should return to: Benjamin Franklin, A. Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, MLK, LBJ, Denmark, Obama. Some mistakes, but a hell of a lot of progress.
All we need to do to rejoin that tradition is shun left Extremism (not the people, just their ideas).
Both both DSA and CRT are utopian. And these new "progressives" follow the 3rd progressive party that was founded by the CPUSA as a front to run Henry Wallace in 1948. Utopianism is deadly.
All we need do is clean house.
DSA is many things, but a "utopian extremist organization" is not among them.
I thought maybe not till I read their own literature about themselves. They are still mainly Marxist -- In about 1969, when one of their predecessor organizations (New American Movement) was just getting started I attended a couple of their classes in Marxist economics. If you know anything about Marxism you know the goal is communism which is a classic utopia -- similar to Thomas More's, the original. Here's how I recently explained DSA.
The moderate wing of DSA (40%) sounds much like Sanders—they don’t say what they mean by socialism. The centrist wing has three caucuses. Bread & Roses says “Ending capitalism will require mobilizing.” Reform & Revolution says, “We do not agree that capitalism can be reformed,” and adopts “the revolutionary socialist tradition of Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky." The Marxist Unity Group, “seeks to end the terrible reign of capitalism,” and replace our “slaver-capitalist Constitution.”
And after the Marxist center, wouldntcha know it, there’s a far left wing—lefter than Marxist-Leninist! Red Star will “abolish capitalism … to achieve communism,” and “only a revolution” can do the job. Red Star is more anti-American than pro-socialism. “Hamas is at the center … and all of our enemies—the US and Israel—are against it.”
Together, the Marxist center and far-left wings make up 60% of DSA, and a Red Star member is the DSA co-chair who gained the most votes in 2025.
P.S. It was the Red Star faction that un-endorsed AOC because she was not extreme enough.
Sanders and Mamdani "socialists"? No they are only Social Democrats who propose programs to provide where the capitalist markets can't.
It's a bit tricky. Took me a year+ to crack that puzzle back in 2016. Bernie is absolutely pretending to be a social Democrat. Here's the easiest way to see that can't be true: If he only wanted Denmark-style (social democratic) reforms, the worst possible thing to do would be to call such reform "Democratic Socialist" because "socialist" has been the main (and often successful) attack on such reforms of almost 100 years and he's lived through many such attacks.
But I only recently found the smoking gun showing that this deception is deliberate and strategic. It's from the main article on DSA history, posted on the DSA website:
"Sanders made clear that he opposed state ownership of corporations, but no mainstream reporter was astute enough to know that the particular socialist tradition that Sanders came out of favored worker, not state ownership, of most firms." -- So yes, he still favors completely overthrowing capitalism.
By only naming capitalist welfare reforms and speaking against state-ownership socialism he has convinced almost everyone that he is no longer a socialist while being careful never to say that (to avoid losing his real-socialist supporters). Here's the link to the quote:
https://www.dsausa.org/about-us/history/
I think that the best approach to policies beyond Social Democracy is found in the economists presentation of the "Solidarity Economy" which does focus on employee ownership. And this might work for the proposed city run grocery stores in food deserts in NYC. But in other areas the government must step in to provide goods and services that the private sector cannot. Two examples are medical care and low income housing.
So in my view Marxism is a critique of capitalism (the most powerful one ever developed and of great actuality). It is not, properly understood, a utopia.
Marxism is not a utopia. As everyone knows, even you, it's a theory. It includes a critique of capitalism, which points out that the distributional results are unfair. That's correct and completely trivial. But as to powerful, It's power was supposedly to point out that capitalism would collapse with some help from the workers, who would replace it with socialism, which would lead to Communism. Surely you know that much. And that really did not happen. In Germany and Italy the workers sided with the Nazis and Fascists and imprisoned and killed Marxists. A theory that gets things that backwards is not powerful, except in the sense of being able to mislead millions of people and cause millions of deaths. Socialism would be a good idea if it worked, but it doesn't. This is why Gramsci and Horkheimer (Critical Theory) invented their neo-Marxist theories in the 1920s and 1930s. This is where Critical Race Theory comes from. You are almost 100 years out of date, but pretty closely aligned with DSA. Their goal is a utopia, and they think they know a short-cut, but have made no progress in 175 years. They are hopeless Utopians.
Marxism does not rely on a notion of fairness, and is not primarily focused on distributional results. Its central point is that capitalism is a contradictory social system, not that it is unfair (a category that is foreign to Marx's thought). German and Italian fascism did not attract significant numbers of organized workers; especially the Italian version of fascism was fundamentally a bourgeois and petit-bourgeois organization. Indeed that is one reason why these movements were so violent: because they could not really win sufficient mass electoral support. Gramsci had no intellectual connection with the movement described as critical theory which of course comes out of Germany and is deeply indebted to Lukács: not at all Gramsci. Critical Race Theory has absolutely no connection to any of this. It is a liberal/bourgeois theory emerging primarily in law schools. More recently one might point out that capitalism has been doing very, very poorly by its own standards for the last forty years or so. So one wonders, whence your confidence in the durability of capitalism? It hasn't been around for that long. Is there a reason to think that it is eternal?
Crenshaw, who named CRT has says it takes CT as given. She is likely referring only to the German strain as you say. But many in the CRT movement follow Gramsci, for example Alicia Garza is strictly a Gramsci follower. Lots of CRT identity politics has infiltrated DSA. Far left ideology has become a total hodge podge. You seem to be some kind of purist version of a Marxist, trying to hold strictly to Marxist texts. For example thinking Marxism has nothing to do with fairness because Marx did use that concept, and ignoring the fact that every one thinks in those terms regarding capitalism, socialism and the like. What do you think Bernie Sanders is selling? You need to try thinking for yourself. You would obviously be quite a capable thinker if you did.
Excellent and hard hitting piece. But one element is missing. Covid authoritarian policies. Left wing pundits seem terrified to touch this one. Texeira alluded to the covid19 systemic breakdown in the intro, he didnt go any further.
Everyone recognizes that "trust" was lost during the covid years. Yeah, no sh*t. Do y'all remember : Lockdowns.. Businesses shuttered... Government checks sent out to everyone which ignited inflation... Schools closed for 2 years in blue cities... First graders expected to learn on zoom..( Of course the most vulnerable kids were hurt the most- and the lefties didn't care).
Masks were mandated although we were regularly treated to the spectacle of our elites gathering without masks eve early on when the pandemic was supposedly so dreadfully dangerous ( among the mask and distancing violators: Gavin Newsom, the Johnson government, Niall Ferguson the British pandemic scientist who modeled the expected death toll).
Then, it's the get out of jail card we knew was coming...Big pharma rolls out a brand new vaccine technology that the NY Times trumpets (front page) as 98% effective. Its mandated, even for pregnant women and young people. Natural immunity is ignored. The vaccine doesnt prevent infection or transmission. Lots of people get bad side effects, including myocarditis and heart attacks.
Through all this authoritarian nightmare, the "experts" were repeatedly wrong, but they never admitted or apologized. Once again, as with climate change extremism, as with mass immigration, who was pushing back against covid extremism?? The right wing populists!
"Niall Ferguson the British pandemic scientist"? Are you quite sure about that?
Looking around the world, responses to the pandemic were unrelated to the colour of the government in power. Even in the US, the first year was under Trump 1.
The vaccine was a success because natural immunity wasn't enough for many people, witness the chaos in ICUs around the world. Nobody made the claim that vaccines prevent transmission, and even statements from Biden stated that they wouldn't (though, to be fair, his statements often said a number of different things in the same speech that were contradictory - it's kind of concerning that it's been 10 years since the richest nation on earth has had a president who could string 2 coherent sentences together).
Can you tell on which issues these experts were proven definitively wrong and the conspiracy theorists were correct on covid? Similarly for climate change - few experts have used data to suggest that the earth would become uninhabitable. However, changes in weather patterns (generally making extreme events more extreme and more common, warming oceans, rapidly shrinking glaciers etc etc were predicted and are leading to a general enshittification of the planet. Where were the climate change denialists correct in this area?
Sorry that was Neil Ferguson, (not Niall ), the British epidemiologist who was responsible for modeling the scary death tolls for the new coronavirus. He was a member of SAGE the group of high level scientists advising the British government During the early and very strict lockdown period in Britain he was caught violating lockdown rules by sneaking out to have sex with his mistress.
Please see the Great Barrington Declaration for more about what should have happened during covid.. And yes, the NY Times did have a headline saying the new covid vaccine was 98% effective. There are literally dozens things that the "conspiracy theorists" ( not sure what that even means anymore) were right about. Here is one ( since you asked). The novel coronavirus leaked from a lab in Wuhan where gain of function research on coronviruses was being carried out. That was called a racist conspiracy theory in the beginning
Regarding the origin of the virus, there is no convincing evidence that it was a lab leak and nor is there certainty that it came from a wet market in Wuhan. The data lie more in favour of the latter, but we'll never know for sure. Anybody who says they are sure one way or the other is not being honest.
It's a reflection of the absurdity of our media that this is a debate. However the BBC pointed to German intelligence saying it was a lab leak
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz7vypq31z7o
And of course there was a hearing in congress because leaked emails showed Fauci orchestrating a cover up
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/fauci-denies-suppressing-covid-lab-leak-theory-before-us-house-panel-2024-06-03/
Senator Rand Paul wrote a whole book about this.
As for what a conspiracy theory is, I like to define it as when people have avoided the scientific method, which always goes for the simplest possible explanation based on the available data, and instead add in additional unnecessary, and usually irrational, assumptions to arrive at a conclusion that usually involves a cover up of some kind by a mysterious elite.
Agree! And the simplest explanation for the new covid virus was that it came from the Wuhan lab which had been doing experiments on novel coronaviruses. Columbia professor Jeffrey Sachs quit the offical commission, of which he was the head, to investigate the origins because he said he was being lied to. The furin cleavage site found in the virus DNA was considered by most experts to be proof that this virus was the result of genetic alterations in a lab. Simplest explanation is that it was.
Sach's testimony to Congress:
https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/115426/documents/HHRG-118-VC00-20230308-SD007.pdf
I suggest that you look at the various original papers analyzing the sequences of viruses and then come back and tell me that you have definitive proof that it was a lab leak and not a zoonotic event. As for "Rand Paul wrote a whole book about this" - that's not going to convince anybody.
What came out in the Fauci emails was that most leading scientists thought it was from GOF research and Fauci instructed them to write a paper debunking that. This was covered in a New Yorker article. For what its worth this is what Googles chat GPT says to the question: Was Covid virus the result of a lab leak? Answer:
That’s a very good and important question — one that scientists, intelligence agencies, and public-health organizations continue to debate. The short answer is: we do not yet know for sure — the evidence does not conclusively prove that COVID-19 was leaked from a lab, but it also does not definitively rule that possibility out. What we do know, and how experts currently view the competing ideas:
So... You asked originally which conspiracy theory was debunked. The very idea that the covid virus came from a lab was labelled a conspiracy theory by major legacy media - a racist conspiracy theory!
The problem with this is very simple. Internationalism is not negotiable. The left has never done well by capitulating to exclusivist nationalism. Remember August 1914 and Burgfried/Union Sacree. So as sensible as this sounds, it is actually a recipe for defeat and humiliation. The way forward is another: an actual social vision.
How do you propose to put this "actual social vision" together and sell it to a durable majority of voters, in the United States or anywhere else? If you manage to succeed, how do you propose to maintain your accomplishment without resort to coercion?
This is not a snarky question, it's an honest one based on the observation that many serious minds since the Industrial Revolution have tried to tackle exactly this problem; none were able to succeed without resort to violent coercion, and none who succeeded by resorting to violence and repression were able to abandon it later.
The US left needs to make a robust case for democratic control over investment decisions: something like what the country did during the Second World War, but on much broader scale and with much greater social input. It is not enough to shower the private sector with cheap funds a la Biden. Personally I do not think Keynesianism (as distinct from what Keynes actually thought) combined with a softer version of Trumpian xenophobia is going to work. It has not worked up until now. The problem of the left, in my opinion, is not that it has been captured by culture war politics; this is mostly a minor irritant and is largely the result of a more fundamental weakness: that the left does not have its own economic and social vision (its geopolitics are also an incoherent disaster). The consequence of this lack is an obsessive focus on fairness, which is a weak and not particularly politically effective idea.
Absent an existential crisis on a par with the Second World War itself, I don't see any way for "The US left (or anyone else) to make a robust case for democratic control over investment decisions". Even presuming that the electorate could be convinced that it was faced with that kind of crisis, I don't see any way to consolidate sufficiently broad support for a command economy - and we should be clear that that is what you're talking about - for longer than the duration of the emergency. Beyond that, we start discussing an Orwellian world. Or a Stalinist one.
Two points: I think it's very likely the existential crisis is coming. Consider the massive overinvestment in AI, the infection of the entire financial system with junk assets, spiraling inequality, continued sluggish growth, and rising un and above all underemployment. Second, the question of the command economy in a sense is a moot one. The choice is not between a "command economy" and something else, but a "command economy" with democratic control or one entirely in the service of the wealthy and well connected as we have now. The nature of contemporary capitalism is such that it has already created substantial elements of command economy, a fact only accelerated and rendered more inegalitarian under Trump.
I don't understand what "internationalism" might be. Nation states have democratic political systems. They are imperfect. But what does that look like internationally? The current EU government with an unelected commission that makes rules and laws is an good example of totally undemocratic and hated post national experiment. By "intenationalism" do you mean the USA being the world's policeman?
Nationalism combined with aggressive militarism is bad. ( But the USA has been aggressive militarily for 50 years, while supposedly being "internationalist). Isn't nationalism just putting your own house in order and taking care of your own people?
Internationalism is not imperialism or the hegemony of a great power. It means a real structure of international cooperation, and certainly the greatest possible freedom of movement for people (not necessarily for capital). Nationalism obviously is a very complex phenomenon which can be combined with internationalism (e.g. France). That is why I was careful to specify that "exclusivist nationalism" is the problem. My point is simply that the idea that the left should embrace the immigration politics of the right, a politics that is saturated with racism and is also hypocritical, is disastrously wrong. There is also very little evidence to think that this is the royal road back to political relevance. Does anyone really believe that if Biden had been tougher on the border he would beaten Trump? I would hope not. Teixera is no fool, but remember this is the same man who predicted a "permanent democratic majority" a few years back.
Biden had other problems besides the border. You are quick to dismiss all critics of mass migration and borderless world as racist. Lets talk about Europe where I lived for 20 years and have family. A large percentage of Europeans are sceptical of high levels of immigration. They rightly understand that a strong social safety net and a social welfare system is not compatible with mass migration. Furthermore, in todays world, any able bodied African can get to Europe if they can scrape together the money. The rational economic decision for any able bodied African is to go to Europe. Thats tens or even hundreds of millions of people. I don't see how that makes sense - and apparently most Europeans don't either.
extreme internationalism on the radical left, and extreme nationalism on the radical right
I agree with the basic policy outline. What I wonder is whether it still would be leftist. And as such, could we convince people who are steeped in Marxism and related dogmas that they have been wrong their entire lives--even if they have been?
Hahaha....."Marxism and related dogmas". But of course right wing social democracy (an utterly failed project if there ever was one) is not a dogma? Or how about the "dogma" of centrism (Clinton, Obama etc)? Or perhaps the utterly failed dogma of neoliberalism renounced now even by its former acolytes like Brad De Long?
Yes it is time for a new left, and it should sit squarely in the middle.
If I understand Teixeira correctly, the new left would be (A) more pragmatic and less dogmatic and (B) approximately right rather than exactly wrong. As a child of the mid-20th century, I would hardly recognize the new and improved left as being left of some imaginary center.
"Hard economic times and slow economic growth typically generate pessimism about the future and fear of change, not broad support for more democracy and social reform. In contrast, when times are good—when the economy is expanding and living standards are steadily rising for most of the population—people see better opportunities for themselves and are more inclined toward social generosity, tolerance, and collective advance."
It may be just a coincidence, but an aversion to conditions in which living standards are steadily rising and people can see better opportunities for themselves is an earmark of Leninist leftists, for whom such conditions pose an obstacle to revolution.
There’s much to agree with here but the fear of the tech oligarchy by both right and left is truly justified. I don’t see how one can be both a tech optimist (aka utopian) and a real optimist as Ruy argues. His criticisms are certainly valid but proposals lacking.
I emphatically disagree about the objection to 'equity': 'Lack of proportional representation of racial groups in desirable positions or achievements is taken as evidence...Therefore, the outcomes should be equalized regardless of merit'. Equal representation, 'equity', isn't the goal but significant disparities are compelling evidence for ongoing discrimination--largely unintentional. As a women, there are a great many jobs for which I wouldn't even be considered. And it isn't that women don't want to do those jobs--they just know that they'll be wasting their time applying, and may just be embarrassed.
And suppose you're turned down for a job. How can you provide compelling evidence that it was because you were a woman applying for a 'man's job' if not by noting that few if any women worked at that job? The issue isn't 'equity', isn't equal representation, or 'diversity': it's giving women a fair shot at getting non-traditional jobs. And that means looking at past hiring practices and the proportion of women in an occupation.
Just out of curiosity, what jobs in particular are you talking about?
(1) I applied for a job driving a machine to sweep a factory floor. On the phone the person asked me whether I was applying for the job for myself. I said I was. He excused himself and, after a sotto voce conversation said the job wasn't available any longer.
(2) I applied for a job as a dishwasher. The guy said 'the job isn't for you' because it would involve 'lifting heavy trays'. I took this case to the EEOC and won a token settlement.
(3) Not my case but more recently a woman who needed to get trained for reasonably well-paying work quickly took a 6 month course to train as a truck driver. She was turned down for trucker jobs because the firms, afraid of sexual harassment suits, insisted that they could only take on women to train if there was a woman available to train them. And, since women are only 3% of the occupation women to do the training weren't widely available.
I support WINTER (Women in Non-Traditional Employment Roles) https://www.winterwomen.org/ which runs pre-apprenticeship training to get women into apprenticeships for construction trades. I'm not interested in college grad jobs, where women are doing just fine.
I agree that women are likely discriminated against for the roles you are referring to and that is something we need to fix. However, most of the focus of "equity" has been on CEO roles and high paying roles in finance and maybe tech and computer science. It's hard to believe that women applying for these roles are discriminated against, in fact at this point they are likely being privileged.
I agree. At my university there's affirmative action for faculty positions but none for staff positions, which are highly sex segregated. And similarly for student work-study positions. I'm not interested in the high end. But please note 2/3 of the population are competing for jobs at the low end.
Exceptional read, thank you.
I'm sympathetic to Rex's new left. Is there any organization, which I would like to support, that advocates this program.