1. I'll be spending a bit more time teasing out different strands of thought on the American left. There are two traditions. Left-populism, a pro-business tradition set against monopoly/finance. And socialism, an anti-business tradition setting workers against business/capital.
2. What makes the left in America confusing is that we are basically populists, which comes out of the small farmer/merchant/engineering tradition. But the language since the 1970s has been that of socialism, which comes from European statists.
3. In America our railroads were privately owned and massive. In Europe the railroads were state owned and not as big. The U.S. state submerged in a democratic private sector, Europe had a civil service and aristocrats. So the traditions differ.
4. The two traditions bleed into one another, but they are distinctly different. It's confusing. Largely Warren and Bernie come out of the populist order, not the socialist one. No one is saying nationalize the means of production, but socialists are better at marketing.
5. There is a real populist movement, it's just so understood that no one actually says it overtly. It's why politicians talk up small business, start-ups, disruptiveness. That's populism, right there. The dislike of monopoly and finance, that's populism, right there.
6. The socialist left comes out of the romantic tradition of the 19th century. They distrust commerce, period, as sordid. Big business, small business, it's all the same. There's a utopianism to it, a sense that one must perfect mankind and solve all problems once and for all.
7. My populist lens is the problem is monopoly and concentrated financial power, which is all the money and power in the world. The socialist critique is that my lens isn't broad enough. Imagine that, all the money and power in the world isn't a broad enough perspective.
8. Here's a socialist critique of my narrative on the New Deal. "Anti-monopoly politics, in and of itself, did not and will not bring meaningful Democratic control over the economy to the Working Class majority."
Get it? The New Deal *failed.*
appealtoreason.net/2019/11/21/boo…
Get it? The New Deal *failed.*
appealtoreason.net/2019/11/21/boo…
9. The New Deal was an extraordinary achievement in taking power from financial oligarchs and monopolists, and distributing as @sanjuktampaul notes 'coordinating rights' to workers/producers/small biz. Yet because it did not bring utopia, it *failed.* Romanticism.
@sanjuktampaul 10. Another example, here's a Jacobin article on how small farms are just as bad as factory farms because they exploit workers. We as consumers must care. But there is a difference between factory farms and small farms? And why talk to us as *consumers*? jacobinmag.com/2016/08/farmwo…
@sanjuktampaul 11. The left populist movement were the ones who largely attacked the Obama era Geithner framework of foreclosures. We are the ones who resurrected antitrust. This is because our main goal is to tame concentrated financial power and help producers through better governance.
@sanjuktampaul 12. Today the magazine of the pro-business populist movement is the American Prospect. Here's @ddayen's Day One agenda project. This isn't a romantic proposal for utopia, it's nuts and bolts governing to free us from financial concentration. prospect.org/day-one-agenda
@sanjuktampaul @ddayen 13. These movements bleed into one another. It's why socialists claim they care about antitrust and do things like say they are 'market socialists.' It's why populists often try to grab onto the mass movement that DSA and Jacobin have helped create. The instincts are similar.
@sanjuktampaul @ddayen 14. It's also why the socialist left can't distinguish between Steve Bannon, who is a quasi-fascist, and @HawleyMO, who sits in the populist anti-monopoly tradition on the right. There are real nationalists in the U.S. who don't like concentrated finance.
@sanjuktampaul @ddayen @HawleyMO 15. The biggest difference between is the flattening of history. To both populists and socialists, the New Deal was a remarkable if incomplete achievement. Socialists see it as a failure because it didn't bring utopia. Populists see it as a success bc democracy is never-ending.
@sanjuktampaul @ddayen @HawleyMO 16. The challenges are different. For socialists, romanticism never allows actual success. Utopia is unachievable and all successes are just failures waiting to happen. That's why the collapse of the New Deal in the 1970s was a failure, even though 40 years of democracy is great.
@sanjuktampaul @ddayen @HawleyMO 17. For Democratic populists, we have allowed the right to grab our language and tradition. Beyond that, our mass organizing groups don't understand their history, and are obsessed with electability instead of the actual ideological core of fighting Wall Street/monopolies.
@sanjuktampaul @ddayen @HawleyMO 18. There are always people trying to seize power and always people trying to stop them. Democracy never ends. There is no utopian end state and trying to get so we can go to brunch is the same instinct that neoliberals have with their 'end of history.'
@sanjuktampaul @ddayen @HawleyMO 19. Public (not national) ownership of utilities is neither uniquely socialist nor populist. The idea of public ownership and/or control of platforms is a very old tradition. And single payer isn't even nationalization of health care, just the payer part.
