Infinite Voices and Narrow Minds

"[There is now a] strange coexistence between an unprecedented variety of opinions that are strongly represented in the public square and the rigid worldview that constrains the beliefs of the most influential people in our society ....

"Never before have so many opinions been at our fingertips—and never before have so many professionals felt unable to voice theirs. What explains this paradox [of infinite voices and narrow minds], why does it matter, and what can we do about it?

"It is impossible to understand the recent politics of the Western world without considering a giant sociological transformation ...: The bourgeoisie has switched sides. ...

"Karl Marx called on the workers, not on the lawyers or freelance illustrators, of the world to unite. The origins of Germany’s Social Democratic Party, of Britain’s Labour Party, and even of the modern-day Democratic Party in the United States lie with factory workers and trade unionists. ... But of late, these realities have started to shift ...

"Plumbers are right wing but lawyers are left wing. Cab drivers are right wing but university professors are left wing. Police officers are right wing but civil servants are left wing. And though many professions claim to be apolitical, the plumbers and cab drivers and police officers increasingly suspect that the lawyers and professors and civil servants are letting their political values influence their work. The decline in respect for 'experts' is in part owed to the blatant lies spread on social media; but it also has its roots in the real ways in which the consensus within these professions has increasingly come to adhere to a narrowly progressive—and often lamentably erroneous—set of assumptions about the world. ...

"The resulting state of affairs leaves both sides equally unhappy. ... What one side perceives as flagrantly unjust domination by the well-credentialed, the other interprets as the perils of revanchist demagoguery."

~ Yascha Mounk from his post 'The Bourgeoisie Has Switched Sides: What happens when elites all believe the same thing'

Chris Trotter: 'honest but deluded'

Political commentator Chris Trotter has always been at the 'honest but deluded' end of the socialist spectrum. That is, he honestly wants material wealth, human progress, free speech, and social freedoms, but he is yet to understand that socialism doesn't deliver any of that -- that the essential nature of socialism is not the "equality" it allegedly strives for, but the need for armed robbery to establish and maintain it. The impossibility of socialism's goals inspires the coercion needed to achieve them.

And he's slowly discovering that even many of his erstwhile allies have grown to like the coercion more than those goals.

The revelation makes good reading.

Writing yesterday on the blog of Martin Bradbury -- who for a while now has had his own eyes slowly opened about the increasingly "woke" joylessness of the controlling left -- Trotter explains that he's finally worked out "why writing about today’s version of 'progressive' politics leaves me feeling so depressed." 

It's not just about the duplicitous party politics of this particular election cycle. He rejects the Greens's "dominant ultra-progressive faction" who "favour sending those found guilty of uttering or publishing 'Hate Speech' to prison for three years"  as much as he spurns Labour's conscious deception over He Puapua -- insisting "that the report in no way represented a blueprint for New Zealand’s transformation into a bicultural state, when a steady stream of official policy decisions confirmed that’s exactly what it was?" ("It is precisely this sort of conscious deception, this deliberate 'fooling' of the voters, that has transformed progressive politics from what used to be a joyful affirmation of idealism into a joyless exercise in dishonesty").

Worse: 

If, by some miracle, Labour-Green wins the election [he writes], then none of the initiatives which both parties signed-up to over the past six years: radical ethnic nationalism, censorship, transgenderism; are going to be abandoned. What looms ahead of New Zealand if Labour-Green wins is grinding economic austerity and relentless cultural warfare. Thinner bread and bloody roses.

He has yet to recognise that it is precisely the lack of traction for Marx's call for conflict between collectives based on class warfare that inevitably saw it morph into conflict between collectives based first on race (easier for the braindead to identify) and now on (trans)gender. But for a collectivist, like him, who still genuinely wishes for progress, the results he sees are depressing: the politics, he say, "are joyless; because the logical end-point of the ideology they espouse is one of universal dissatisfaction and unending conflict. In other words, their direction-of-travel is dystopic."

Progressive politics [he writes] has moved beyond the idea of uplifting and overcoming; of building a society in which there are no masters, no servants; no rich, no poor. Envisaged now is what can only be described as a perpetual theatre of cruelty, in which those to whom evil has been done, are encouraged to do evil in return. Far from serving as the emancipating “vanguard” of the Proletariat, as Karl Marx hoped, the intelligentsia of the Twenty-First Century are claiming for themselves the role of Grand Inquisitor. They have made themselves the pitiless torturers of all those whose privileges cannot be overcome or abandoned, only confessed to and punished.

Marxist "class warfare," in other words, has bled inevitably into so-called "cultural Marxism," and the grim authoritarianism of a Maoist Cultural Revolution. 

Over the top? Barking mad? Grossly defamatory of activists who only want people to be free and equal? How I wish it were true! But one only has to visit the febrile world of social media to grasp the perverse enjoyment contemporary progressives derive from “flaming”, “de-platforming”, and “cancelling” – oh, what an ominous word that is – those who refuse to step forward and confess....

Those who were in Albert Park on 25 March 2023, and those who watched the many video recordings made at the scene, could not help but note the delirious hatred of the mob, and the brutal behaviour it spawned. Such is the praxis of the post-modern progressive: telling the news media that theirs was a gathering of peace and love – while punching a 70-year-old woman in the face.... Have a care when fighting monsters,” warned the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, “lest ye become a monster yourself.” ...

That which Twentieth-Century progressives most feared, Twenty-First Century progressivism has become.

He's come a long way, Mr Trotter. 

When he realises one day that the only equality we need for human progress is equality before the law -- and that "the wealth of the rich is not the cause of the poverty of the poor, but rather of making the poor less poor, indeed, rich" -- then perhaps he will be ready to embrace the cause of true freedom. Without coercion.

"Let's be clear, the Greens require socialist state control to achieve their goals."

"Let's be clear, the Greens require socialist state control to achieve their goals. Their constant and divisive analysis of class warfare ... is self-fulfilling: The entrepreneurial class will get cancelled, and the state become an inefficient bourgeoisie. 

    "[They offer] only a one-dimensional school of thought: 

• The excesses of the ‘rich’ post colonialists are to blame for climate change and the socio-economic inequities of capitalist society. 
• Market-driven capitalists should be consigned to unforgiving repentance. 
• The wealthy should fund the state that unfortunately still relies on its taxes until the silent revolution can acquire the historically ill-gotten assets. 
• This narrative relies on stable economic growth (GDP) but its fundamental flaw is that economic growth, by the Greens own analysis and admission, is in their view destroying the planet. 
• Yet a Greens government [would need] the derivative wealth from a market-led economic multiplier for their social and climate justice agenda. 
• Meanwhile the breakdown of law and order further undermines society and economy.

"The Greens fail to point out any actual international successes of these economically destructive policies and models.
    "There is no nuance, no understanding of markets, no acknowledgement of ‘equitable’ wealth generation and distribution or how to achieve it... The reality is the greens policy requires totalitarianism and is championed on the back of [allegedly] imminent and catastrophic climate change. It is nothing short of a Marxist revolution in a green guise. ...
    "James Shaw ignores the impossibility of the utopic vision, knowingly championing vacuous policy from a position of privilege. Marama Davidson provides no economic intelligence and more incoherent ideology. Chloe Swarbrick seems to be now mired in class rhetoric and social justice issues. None of them show any capability or realisation for their inevitable and ultimately necessary coalition of the state with corporations that they will have to turn to as social control dissipates with economic contraction.
    "The Greens now represent the implosion of our society as we know it."

~ Alastair Boyce, from his post 'The Greens's Agenda v Reality'

 

"How did we get to this point under a Labour Government?"

"How did we get to this point under a Labour Government? Social class politics evolved from the 1970s into today’s identity politics.... 
    "Up to the 1980s Te Tiriti settlements involved reparations for historical injustices. However, especially since the 1987 Lands case, the focus has shifted to one of a supposed ‘partnership’ between Māori and the Crown. The Māori activist voice has moved from socio-economic concerns to wider identarian, political and constitutional ambitions.
    "The scope of Te Tiriti issues has widened far beyond the intent of the signatories in 1840. 'Presentism' involves interpreting Te Tiriti as a modern rather than an 1840 document. For example, in 1840 ‘taonga’ meant tangible physical property such as a spear, a fishing net or a waka. It did not remotely mean, for example, language, intellectual and cultural ‘property,’ broadcasting spectrum or water.
    "The 2019 'He Puapua' document proposed radical constitutional and other changes in New Zealand. Amongst many other initiatives it signalled a future intent for Māori to impose levies on water (as well as on other resources). He Puapua has set the scene for many Labour Government policy initiatives. The 'Māori caucus' has been a driving force in support of this. Some MPs in this caucus may have forgotten their duty to act for all New Zealanders, not just a racially-defined subset. In future, some may be asked to 'check their privilege…'"

~ Peter Winsley, from his post 'The Water Services Entities Bill raises the question: What does Labour stand for?'

'The rich should pay their fair share' ?

"'The rich should pay their fair share.'
    "This term, 'fair share,' is an anti-concept. It's rationally unusable term designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concept.
    "One legitimate concept is: the purpose of government.
    "Another is actual fairness. Fairness is when you get what you deserve. But in this catch-phrase, fairness is when you're harmed by the right amount....

    "What does fair mean [in this statement]? It means more. More than they currently pay. Then more than that. Then more again. A blank check until the rich are drained of all blood."
          ~ Keith Weiner

“I don't care about the poor, I don't care about the middle class and I don't care about the rich. I care about good people who live virtuous lives, who engage in the world - who are rational, who take responsibility for their own lives." #QotD

“I don't care about the poor, I don't care about the middle class and I don't care about the rich. I care about good people who live virtuous lives, who engage in the world - who are rational, who take responsibility for their own lives. I care about virtue, good people. I know scoundrels in the upper, middle and lower class and I don't care about them. I want the irrational to suffer from their irrationality, I want the lazy to suffer from their laziness and the ones without virtue to suffer from that. Marx came up with the idea of dividing people into classes and now everyone buys into it, left, centre and right. I want hardworking people to benefit from their virtues.”
          ~ Yaron Brook
.

'Class' versus 'Caste': "The socialist doctrine fails entirely to take into account the essential difference between the conditions of a status or caste society, and those of a capitalistic society." #QotD

"The inherent weakness of [the socialist] doctrine is that it deals with classes and not with individuals.... But even Marx cannot help admitting that a conflict exists between the interests of an individual and those of the class to which he belongs* ... Marx obfuscated the problem by confusing the notions of caste and class....
    "In a status [caste-ridden] society the individual inherits his caste membership from his parents, he remains through all his life in his caste, and his children are born as members of it. Only in exceptional cases can good luck raise a man into a higher caste. For the immense majority birth unalterably determines their station in life.
    "The classes which Marx distinguishes in a capitalistic society are different. Their membership is fluctuating. Class affiliation is not hereditary. It is assigned to each individual by a daily repeated plebiscite, as it were, of all the people. The public in spending and buying determines who should own and run the plants, who should play the parts in the theatre performances, who should work in the factories and mines. Rich men become poor, and poor men rich. The heirs as well as those who themselves have acquired wealth must try to hold their own by defending their assets against the competition of already established firms and of ambitious newcomers. In the unhampered market economy there are no privileges, no protection of vested interests, no barriers preventing anybody from striving after any prize.
    "[In a capitalistic society] access to any of the Marxian classes is free to everybody. The members of each class compete with one another; they are not united by a common class interest and not opposed to the members of other classes...
    "[The] socialist or communist doctrine fails entirely to take into account the essential difference between the conditions of a status or caste society, and those of a capitalistic society."
        ~ Ludwig Von Mises, from his book Theory and History, p. 112-15 

* Thus we read in the Communist Manifesto: "The organisation of the proletarians into a class, and consequently into a political party, is at every instant again shattered by the competition between the workers themselves."