Comments on: A guide to modern lefties

By: ClimateHate « Freethinking Economist

ClimateHate « Freethinking Economist — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:53:05 +0000

[...] have convoluted theories for why their opponents think the rubbish that they do. (see the IEA on Leftist [...]

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 17:34:13 +0000

Kris, interestingly the sales of Ayn Rand’s books have also increased dramatically and there have been a number of new studies about her work.

By: Kris

Kris — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 15:04:07 +0000

Don’t know if it’s related to Post-Marxist academia, but I’ve heard the interpretation quite often over the last 1 1/2 years that the crisis ‘proved’ Marx right, in retrospective. And sales of Das Kapital have gone up sharply as well.
But then again, anyone who had ever mumbled something about ‘Casino-capitalism’ over the last years now claims that they had ‘predicted’ all this.

By: The Right and Economics « Freethinking Economist

The Right and Economics « Freethinking Economist — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 19:30:06 +0000

[...] what has the Left really added to economic knowledge in recent years – a point made on the IEA blog? Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)aero-what?BENIN / COMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC, SOCIAL [...]

By: Flavio Graf

Flavio Graf — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 17:41:11 +0000

We must start looking at left and right from a social Darwinian preservation point of view, in which:

1) One side keeps the individual survival trait as its most important expression in order to secure the collective survival.

2) The other side, recognizing its weakness, tries to spread its failures (collectivism, subsidies, etc.), increasing the risk of other individuals and the collective as a whole. It manages to do so, by building a critical mass of weak individuals and corresponding interest groups. We can say that is the ‘one’ thing that lefties are competitive at: amalgamating stupidity and incompetence.

By: Peter

Peter — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:40:33 +0000

Richard,

I suppose we need to distinguish between the ‘true believers’ and the rather insidious way in which terms and styles of politics seep into the mainstream. Of course, as someone whose work depends on the peer review of colleagues, saying that post-marxists are ‘only’ dangerous in academic circles was meant to show they they are not completely ineffectual.

By: Richard Wellings

Richard Wellings — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:11:50 +0000

I hate to disagree with both Len and Peter, but I think ‘post-Marxist’ thought is exceptionally dangerous. The application of some of these ideas for political ends has stifled free speech (see DRM’s comment) and helped make many debates ‘off-limits’. Even the Conservative Party today uses the language of political correctness and adopts largely egalitarian concepts such as social justice and environmentalism. This may reflect the extent to which the political/cultural agenda has been shaped by ‘leftist’ ideas in recent years. In particular, some of Gramsci’s ideas are thought to have been particularly influential on the New Labour project.

By: Peter

Peter — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 15:36:49 +0000

Len, you’re quite right that post-marxists talk to themselves and they are not particularly dangerous, apart from within academic circles where they are reasonably numerous. One of their most dangerous habits, however, is to try to tell others what they should talk about and how they should say it!

By: len shackleton

len shackleton — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 14:27:15 +0000

I don’t particularly like this name-calling: “lefties” sounds like the sort of thing you’d have said in a student union. And while there are indeed new pro-state ideas out there, I wouldn’t have thought post-Marxists etc were any danger. They’re people talking to themselves, confined largely to sociology departments in universities. I think the more obvious dangers at the moment are ostensibly more moderate and certainly have more political nous – climate change activists, “Spirit Level” egalitarians, “nudgers” etc etc.

By: D.R. Myddelton

D.R. Myddelton — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:24:30 +0000

Language is important, as Hayek, like George Orwell, recognised. ‘Crimethink’ seems not a million miles (or do I mean 1.6 million kilometres?) from ‘political correctness’. And Orwell’s ‘Newspeak’ aimed to make thoughtcrime impossible because there would be no words with which to express it.

I came across this concept in connection with inflation accounting. Both in the UK and the US, governments interfered with accounting rules to prevent accountants using ‘constant purchasing power’ as the unit of account. Why? Because they could not tolerate expression of the truth that both governments were responsible for debasing their domestic currency.