Is there really a leftist outbreak happening in the US? Or maybe a strong anti-capitalist sentiment growing every day more?

[Flinn]

Those are genuine questions from my side, I really am confused.

I've been reading a while about the situation with the wages and cost of life going up in the US, and the net is plenty of memes and tweets/posts about the whole issue, and they are quite popular

https://imgur.com/gallery/D7kJRvd

This dump here for instance have had like 50K views and over 1K upvotes in 12 hours, which is quite something for Imgur. I don't doubt there's quite a lot of garbage there, but what amazes me is the fact that a lot of people, I suppose of the younger generations, seems to be sliding towards a clear leftist position, which is uncommon for the US as far as I know.

Thoughts?

[antaeus]

This thread will pull them in...

OK that's not fair. But I think this thread is probably going to go off the deep end pretty quickly.

I wonder if a lot of talk about 'the left' and 'the right' is actually incidental. There has been left and right politics forever. But what we have is polarisation that is reaching problematic levels. And as this continues, people will cluster at the extremes - and those extreme ideas, both left and right will seem popular within their bubbles.

Some of what Americans currently think is 'left' or 'right' is not necessarily the same as what has been considered 'left' or 'right' in the past, or is considered that in other countries... and most of what really is traditional extreme left or right would still be unpalatable to most Americans.

Although that said... lethal partisanship and affective polarisation does seem to be on the rise... 40% of Americans who belong to a party do seem to think those across the aisle are actually 'evil' and somewhere around 10% endorse violence.

So I wouldn't explicitly say that leftists are a reaching any critical or problematic mass in the US. But rather those who are closed to empathising and understanding the ideas of others are the problem. And they feature on both sides of this particular discussion as we will no doubt see in this thread.

[Prodromos]

- Due to humanity's fallen nature, leftism comes naturally to people. It's a struggle to be right-wing, and most people hate to struggle.

- It's a myth that the young are rebellious. Most young people are hyper-conformist bores who unconsciously imitate whoever is highest-status in their society. Given left-wing dominance of nearly every culture-forming institution in America for the last century or so, it's no wonder leftism has become the default perspective for most young people.

- This is all divinely ordained.

[EmperorBatman999]

My sense is that the pandemic has revealed fundamental problems and inequalities in society, and the lockdowns and constant political instability have caused a great deal of restlessness and agitation which manifests itself in the form of fringe political discourse. The far-left has received the most attention because of the effects of their movement have become readily felt with the undeclared, unorganized strike across the hospitality and shipping industries, framed as a labor shortage. It also helps that the current US Presidential Administration has been keen to listen to the progressive faction of their party, who are now calling for many radical reforms and national projects.

I have no evidence for it, but I suspect that Chinese operatives may also be playing a role in the sudden burst of leftist discourse. As both the mainstream Left and Right have become discredited (Bush on the right started needless wars and postponed climate action, Obama betrayed his constituents to play crony politics), China sees a new opening to weaken the United States right when universities are closing their Confucius Institutes, which were previously a Chinese trojan horse to distribute pro-CCP propaganda to American university students and faculty. Coinciding with the centennial anniversary of China's Communist Party, this is perfect timing to demonstrate a Chinese view of socialist thought at a time Americans are doubtful towards any other political options.

[Cyclops]

The US has a tradition of strong corporate interests dominating government, back past the first slave-owners Revolt (against the UK). Naturally people organise to oppose existing power structures and impose others where they enjoy greater benefits.

Currently the Wall Street crowds, the heirs of Yankee merchants, and a few other groups, enjoy complete dominance. The Presidential elections are a joke, usually a bum-fight between their various lackeys (eg 2019). Very occasionally a member of the elite becomes president themselves, but that puts pressure on the illusion of "democracy".

People fight against this narrow dominant group to better their lot. They need an organising principle, and typically you can either adopt other people's principles ("Jesus, but he's not a Jew") or come up with your own ("money bad, Marx good"). Socialism offers an alternative to the capitalist paradigm and it must be a real one because so much effort is put into attacking Socialist states and denigrating the philosophy. We in the West spent decades slogging away at the Soviet Union (and pressuring successful Socialists like Israel to change their economy) whereas Nazi Germany got a free pass to the brink of genocide (that system was plainly ape-**** insane and seemed bound to fail, so why worry?). It took about seventy years to take the Soviets down so it was a fairly robust system, China has become pretty capitalist in less time (1950 to 1980-ish when Deng said "It is glorious to be rich")- China's prinicple political theory seems to remain more Confucian and absolutist than Socialist (perhaps its enjoyed some success because it "wasn't real Socialism"?).

Competition axiomatically produces better outcomes in capitalist theory. Currently as a political and as a capitalist economic system the US does not enjoy anything like equal competition. The EU has been savagely destabilised with Brexit (to the immense cost of the UK) and China, previously allowed to slowly pursue its expansion to self-chosen limits in Asia is being set up for a massive sucker punch. The US colossus weilds staggering power around the globe while focussing most of its political energy on itself.

Conon has appositely discussed the ""New Gilded Age" and US society is enjoying, for rich people, an era of plenty. Most people are doing better, but the inequality is galling, and corporate misbehaviour (and the lack of consequences) is becoming more visible. Apple devices are sabotaged in plain sight. The corruption around "legal" opioid pedalling is a massive public scandal. People resist injustice and unfairness, but often the resistance can be labelled rioting or cult-like behaviour.

Naturally this corruption disguises itself as "the free market" and its an easy smear to call opponents communists etc. but without a competing principle to keep it somewhat honest, its a natural progression from capitalism to cartel corruption. The US has a wonderful way of reducing complex economic and political tangles to "Orange Man Bad or "thanks Obama".

[Lord Thesaurian]

I’m not sure it’s useful to view the leftward shift in the US as a function of alienation from capitalism or overt anti-capitalism, though for certain segments of the population, that’s more or less true. Having said that, institutional dominance is the appropriate term for it, because it isn’t a political fad, it’s an era. Wherever one might put the starting point, we’re in it.

A look at the most partisan industries by political donations shows the vast majority of donations from the online sector, media, music and entertainment, law, civil service, and education go to Democrats, 75-100%. This isn’t to suggest one party is more or less monied than the other, but to illustrate the de facto alignment between left wing politics, and so much of what both influences and reflects popular and political culture. Your mileage may vary on the extent of impact based on circumstances. Whether what we’re seeing is “the long march through the institutions,” or “bourgeois cultural hegemony,” leftist institutional dominance helps to explain why the reaction to the phenomenon can be viewed as anti-capitalist, yet the intellectuals produced by the bourgeois class are the would-be anti-capitalists.

[chilon]

Those are genuine questions from my side, I really am confused.

I've been reading a while about the situation with the wages and cost of life going up in the US, and the net is plenty of memes and tweets/posts about the whole issue, and they are quite popular

https://imgur.com/gallery/D7kJRvd

This dump here for instance have had like 50K views and over 1K upvotes in 12 hours, which is quite something for Imgur. I don't doubt there's quite a lot of garbage there, but what amazes me is the fact that a lot of people, I suppose of the younger generations, seems to be sliding towards a clear leftist position, which is uncommon for the US as far as I know.

Thoughts?

I wouldn't call it full-on leftist or anti-capitalist but simply a pull back from many of the assumptions of far-right dogma that have controlled many policy decisions without empirical evidence backing them up. For instance, minimum wage. Right-wing dogma has dominated the conversation for decades despite the fact that empirical evidence doesn't support it. We just had the Nobel Prize in economics won by David Card whose work has long demonstrated that min wage increases don't affect job markets the way radical libertarians have claimed. So what we are really seeing across several spheres is a natural correction based on evidence and science from right-wing dogma that was based on faith not fact. Of course some right-wing pedagogues will shout that anything other than extreme libertarian economics is "communism" but those types should always be ignored and not taken as representative.

[Cope]

Neoliberal economics (the dominant model in the Anglosphere and the Europe Union) isn't "far-right" and "extreme libertarian economics" have not "controlled many policy decisions". The only major area where neoliberal and libertarian economics genuinely intersect is on the unrestricted movement of labour. As for the minimum wage, the US already has a federal minimum and each state can institute minimums above that threshold.

[Heathen Hammer]

There is nothing "anti-capitalist" about the modern Western left, maybe with some marginal grassroots exceptions. Overall "democratic socialists" would bicker with their "business oriented" colleagues on pointless inconsequential wedge/identity politics issues, but always attach themselves together like some sort of neoliberal Voltron when it comes to defending the interests of megacorporate donors. Hence why demands of Western left have hardly any benefit to the working class and are mainly there to help megacorporations to suppress grassroots competition.
For example take wages. Rise of minimal wage doesn't affect major businesses, devastates smaller ones (helping the former a great deal) and population gets nothing out of it, since their purchasing power doesn't change or even decreases, as prices go up.
Another good example is immigration. Working class gains no benefit from mass-immigration, major corporations, however get influx of cheap labor, while value of labor remains low. Left supports that unconditionally.
Or who could forget "tax the rich", which embodies itself in... IRS being allowed to see any transactions over $600. This will totally show them billionaires!
So while OP is right about growing anti-capitalist sentiment, he completely misses the point of Western left being little more then loyal lackeys of the corporate establishment.

[antaeus]

There is nothing "anti-capitalist" about the modern Western left, maybe with some marginal grassroots exceptions. Overall "democratic socialists" would bicker with their "business oriented" colleagues on pointless inconsequential wedge/identity politics issues, but always attach themselves together like some sort of neoliberal Voltron when it comes to defending the interests of megacorporate donors. Hence why demands of Western left have hardly any benefit to the working class and are mainly there to help megacorporations to suppress grassroots competition.

(rubbish deleted)

So while OP is right about growing anti-capitalist sentiment, he completely misses the point of Western left being little more then loyal lackeys of the corporate establishment.

To an extent... I agree with some of what you're saying. We're certainly seeing the unintentional servants of different billionaires and their media empires confronting each other. The actual issues they battle for are almost irrelevant and might as well be team colours for all it matters. You can't claim that we're seeing a leftist takeover when the most viewed news network in the country is openly centre-right. But you can argue that we're seeing a battle between the wealthy backers of Team GOP vs Team Dem. People pick their team then take on its manifesto.

[Cope]

To an extent... I agree with some of what you're saying. We're certainly seeing the unintentional servants of different billionaires and their media empires confronting each other. The actual issues they battle for are almost irrelevant and might as well be team colours for all it matters. You can't claim that we're seeing a leftist takeover when the most viewed news network in the country is openly centre-right. But you can argue that we're seeing a battle between the wealthy backers of Team GOP vs Team Dem. People pick their team then take on its manifesto.

The liberal/leftist institutional "takeover" has already occurred, particularly in social, cultural and educational spaces. Conservatism having retained some degree of influence indicates only that this dominance is not absolute.

[EmperorBatman999]

Neoliberal economics (the dominant model in the Anglosphere and the Europe Union) isn't "far-right" and "extreme libertarian economics" have not "controlled many policy decisions". The only major area where neoliberal and libertarian economics genuinely intersect is on the unrestricted movement of labour. As for the minimum wage, the US already has a federal minimum and each state can institute minimums above that threshold.

I'm not sure about that. To give you an example, in the state where I live, the state governor's office has a management program that helps oversee the daily functions of the state government. Their tagline is: "Customer-focused Government."

Not "Citzen-focused Government," or anything like that, but government for customers. Who are my state's customers? This sort of framing could only be a product of neoliberalism which suggests that everything is a financial transaction, right down to what the governments does for its citzens, er, customers (I guess?) The government is supposed to sell you a service in your taxes, rather than providing them as a good for the general public.

You could also say that the general move away from public services broadly across the US also reflects neoliberal principles, covered under matters such as "School Choice" (which leads to public schools losing funding in favor of private educational institutions beyond the state's control). You see it, too, with public transit systems, which are meant to create a profit like a private business (another example: the DC Metro phrases announcements as "Dear Metro Customers," not "Metro passengers" or whatever), which altogether hinders the quality of the service, and finally you see it with the general neglect towards most other public goods like road maintenance. America is degrading because neoliberal policies have emphasized profitability first, public utility second.

[Cope]

I'm not sure about that. To give you an example, in the state where I live, the state governor's office has a management program that helps oversee the daily functions of the state government. Their tagline is: "Customer-focused Government."

Not "Citzen-focused Government," or anything like that, but government for customers. Who are my state's customers? This sort of framing could only be a product of neoliberalism which suggests that everything is a financial transaction, right down to what the governments does for its citzens, er, customers (I guess?) The government is supposed to sell you a service in your taxes, rather than providing them as a good for the general public.

You could also say that the general move away from public services broadly across the US also reflects neoliberal principles, covered under matters such as "School Choice" (which leads to public schools losing funding in favor of private educational institutions beyond the state's control). You see it, too, with public transit systems, which are meant to create a profit like a private business (another example: the DC Metro phrases announcements as "Dear Metro Customers," not "Metro passengers" or whatever), which altogether hinders the quality of the service, and finally you see it with the general neglect towards most other public goods like road maintenance. America is degrading because neoliberal policies have emphasized profitability first, public utility second.

The existence of such programs rather proves my point. Libertarians (esp. "extreme" libertarians) typically demand minimal govt interference in the market; neoliberals are capitalist/corporatist, but they insist on state involvement the economy.

[EmperorBatman999]

The existence of such programs rather proves my point. Libertarians (esp. "extreme" libertarians) typically demand minimal govt interference in the market; neoliberals are capitalist/corporatist, but they insist on state involvement the economy.

You are moving the goal-posts. I never said that these policies were libertarian, and all what this proves is that neoliberalism isn't libertarianism, even if they share some precepts and similarities on some issues, and both will cite the Austrian School when envisioning a socio-economic model for the world. Both ideologies like business and believe that what is good for business is good for society, but they disagree on methods. Libertarians say that the government should play as minimal of a role in society as possible, whereas neoliberals believe that government can play an active role in optimizing conditions for businesses to operate, including through active funding and eliminating public alternatives. A libertarian would call for the government to divest itself from everything, right away. Neoliberals know they need a government with a good degree of responsibility so that they continue to have jobs and receive lobbyist kickbacks.

Ayn Rand, as we all know as the matriarch of libertarianism, in her gigantic novel Atlas Shrugged for example (of which I read all 1,000+ pages), admonished corporate socialism, or the practice where governments offer handouts or favorable contracts to certain corporations, and she'd prefer for there to be only a barebones government, if that. To Rand, government help for companies is actually a bad thing for competition because subsidies and non-competitive contracts keep otherwise bad, uncompetitive companies afloat and tend to encourage unproductive behavior. She would rail against the fact these companies would prefer to network with top politicians and hire lobbyists, rather than concentrating on creating a high-quality, in-demand product. As for the government, her utopian model, Galt's Gulch, features no civic institutions whatsoever, only private individuals (mostly talented industrialists or inventors) who somehow all get along. Neoliberals, conversely, may feel that corporations need additional help to prime their productivity. Furthermore, Rand offers absolutely no compromise, and phrased the attitude of her philosophy of Objectivism as such with John Galt's speech where he flatly states, "A is A. A cannot be B." Neoliberalism remains a hybrid system, even in its grossest excesses, and would therefore be rejected by Rand. The only society which would please Rand is a society with a government that only maintains an army to defend the borders from invasion and a police to uphold the legality of private contracts.

Libertarians will see that government has no business in society. Neoliberals, meanwhile, believe that government is a business, operating in concert with other businesses, even if many also think that government is an inefficient, irresponsible business. Incidentally, many of those inefficiencies have to do with neoliberal handicapping. In the US, the Postal Service is often disparaged for being slow and bad at delivering mail and parcels. We hear a lot of talk about how the postal service can't even pay for itself, although legislation has deliberately curtailed the Postal Service's own ability to run properly and has made it beholden to operating like a business, which has in turn hurt its own ability to deliver the service it was constitutionally granted to do.

We can use schools as an example, as I had mentioned in the earlier post. Neoliberals believe that there should be private alternatives to public schools (and will disparage public schools and kneecap their development, rather than reforming them to improve their learning), and neoliberals will change laws to allow alternatives such as private schools and homeschool. Libertarians will believe that there should never have been public schools at all, because it isn't the government's business to tell people what they should learn. Both will still agree that public schools are wasteful to taxpayer money, and that the educational industry should be deregulated to encourage private-market competition. Altogether, I think these attitudes are a huge detriment to national education and will make education more unequal than it has been by pricing lower-class and even middle-class children out of quality education. It also does nothing to help public schools innovate themselves to improve their teaching and become more nurturing environments for the nation's youth. Already, many public school teachers are expected to coach sports, which I believe hinders their ability to teach effectively (besides also eliminating teachers who are great at teaching [you know, their main job], but might not be good at sports). Why: Because sports bring money and recognition to the school, and because the act of teaching itself isn't considered value enough for the school alone. Only a neoliberal society could disparage the act of teaching because it doesn't bring sufficient monetary value. Under previous systems, teaching was at least praised because even if didn't make money for the institutions, a talented teacher imparted benefits onto their students in way that were intangible but far more valuable than money itself. Neoliberalism, conversely, believes that money is the only standard of value.

Neoliberals will go a step further on the school matter by supporting school-choice vouchers, where parents can take the portion of taxes meant for the public school and instead use it on tuition for the private school of their choice, which essentially subsidizes private enterprises in a rather corporate socialist way, at the expense of crippling public schools, which are meant to be high quality education that is free because the cost has been defused across the entire community. Charter schools go a step further by being partially subsidized by the state, but completely exempt from government standards and oversight, allowing the government to effectively remove itself from the hands-on process of guiding education.

Anyway, your Market Conservative ideology doesn't necessarily need to go as far as libertarianism to have detrimental effects on society.

[Heathen Hammer]

The liberal/leftist institutional "takeover" has already occurred, particularly in social, cultural and educational spaces. Conservatism having retained some degree of influence indicates only that this dominance is not absolute.

Corporate elites figured using champagne socialists to divide society and push predatory neoliberal policies under vague "social" pretexts is an effective strategy, or at least it was effective until public started developing immunity towards it, hence why they are panicking now, since the king, for al intents and purposes, is naked.
The big mistake that both sides of the argument are making is assuming that left is an independent force of its own.
Left in on itself is a non-entity, that says only what its corporate owners want it to say and can't do anything without their funding and agency they provide.

[fkizz]

Or who could forget "tax the rich", which embodies itself in... IRS being allowed to see any transactions over $600. This will totally show them billionaires!
So while OP is right about growing anti-capitalist sentiment, he completely misses the point of Western left being little more then loyal lackeys of the corporate establishment.

In theory "rich get taxed", in practice they already had before hand a team of accountants and lawyers to reduce plenty of them, which comes cheaper.
The ones who get even more taxed are the middle class.. and they keep voting for it.
Then only a matter of time until the lower and middle-classes get their tax increase too, with some subsidy to draw attention elsewhere.

[Heathen Hammer]

In theory "rich get taxed", in practice they already had before hand a team of accountants and lawyers to reduce plenty of them, which comes cheaper.
The ones who get even more taxed are the middle class.. and they keep voting for it.
Then only a matter of time until the lower and middle-classes get their tax increase too, with some subsidy to draw attention elsewhere.

They already tax lower class's purchasing power via inflation.... which the Western left is also perfectly fine with, as with every other aspect of predatory neoliberalism except for cosmetic non-essential issues.

[antaeus]

cosmetic non-essential issues.

What is a cosmetic non-essential issue?

Can you answer this without being subjective?

[Heathen Hammer]

What is a cosmetic non-essential issue?

Usually some nonsensical stuff pertaining to identity politics or distraction wedge issues, but having functionally no effect on economy. Kinda like Satanic Panic era evangelicals demanding that metal music and horror movies are banned or how "democratic socialists" today demand more censorship and gun control.

[antaeus]

Usually some nonsensical stuff pertaining to identity politics or distraction wedge issues, but having functionally no effect on economy. Kinda like Satanic Panic era evangelicals demanding that metal music and horror movies are banned or how "democratic socialists" today demand more censorship and gun control.

So subjective things then....