Left Wing Populism May Not Be The Answer

[EnglishEdward]

Yeah, I don't trust anything Vox has to say on this subject so...and indeed, giving the article a cursory read I can see a lot of issues with their analysis...

I agree, but I limit my coment to its misunderstanding of what happened in the UK.

The referenced article claims:

Take Britain’s Labour Party, which swung to the populist left by electing Jeremy Corbyn,
a socialist who has proposed renationalizing Britain’s rail system, as its leader in 2015.
The results have been disastrous: the Brexit vote in favor of leaving the European Union,
plummeting poll numbers for both Corbyn and his party, and a British political scene that
is shifting notably to the right on issues of immigration and multiculturalism.

This is complete nonsense.

Support for the Labour party has been dropping ever since Labour was elected in 1997, under
Tony Blair, that was long before those outside Islington North had even heard of Jeremy Corbyn.

The problem is that the Blairist part of the Labour party is still stuck in group think bubble and they have
not realised that if people actually want conservative policies they would rather have them more honestly
from the conservative party itself; and so they are still running away from any real populism thinking that
all they need to do is improve the marketing of tory-lite labour that so completely failed in 2010 and 2015.

FYI the Brexit vote was as much an example of left wing populism as of right wing populism.
I recognise that this is not at all obvious to those outside the UK as the pro EU media very cleverly
persistently highlighted so called rightwingers Farage, Gove and Johnson ignoring left wing Euro-critics.

The people who are most in favour of immigration and multiculturalism are the wealth elite
because immigration strengthens their bargaining position by firstly increasing the number of
employees competing for work and secondly breaking worker solidarity by national factionalism.

But many of the ordinary people can see through that and can do the arithmetic i.e. that for the 1%
of the world that is the UK taking half a million immigrants pa from the other 99% merely fills the UK
without resolving problems of war, backwardness, ethnic conflict or simply over population abroad.
The Brexit result means that simply libelling them all as racist or xenophobic no longer works so well.


Yes, Labour polling has dropped more recently; but that merely reflects the consequence of infighting within
Labour and that the conservatives under Theresa May and Phil Hammond are not really seen by the public as
the establishment party in power since 2010 but are seen as under new management since August 2016 and
are therefore benefitting from the honeymoon effect; rather than languishing as disgruntled remoaners.

The thing is that the Conservative party is congenially unable to say No to the rich who are increasing their
share of assets and income. As there is no magic growth in the UK to pay for that, everyone else gets poorer;
which will swing them back to looking for a more equitable distribution. But this will not benefit Labour if they continue
to be inclined to be generous to the rich, the European Union, the rest of the world etc rather than their historical base.

 

[Lohrenswald]

The problem is that the Blairist part of the Labour party is still stuck in group think bubble and they have not realised that if people actually want conservative policies they would rather have them more honestly from the conservative party itself

I can't believe like so few people in the leadership of large leftwing parties (as well as the democratic party in America I suppose) realise this

 

[warpus]

no they're not

Thanks for your as usual insightful post, it adds a lot to the discussion.

 

[Lexicus]

"Did well" is kind of relative. "Did better than Clinton," yes of course. But doing better than Clinton in the primary is not necessarily an indicator that a broader segment of voters would also buy into that.

Sure. Bernie did well enough with them to actually contest the Democratic Primary when the elites in that party expected him to win hardly any votes outside of Vermont.

And that's another basic issue with the article there, quite aside from its laughable labeling of Feingold and Strickland as "Bernie-style populists." If you had told me, two years ago, or even a few months before the primaries started, that Bernie Sanders would win almost half the states and ultimately lose the primary to Clinton by three million votes out of about 21 million cast, I'd have laughed in your face. Sanders did better than anyone thought he would. Corbyn entered the leadership race for Labour largely to get issues on the agenda, and to move the conversation. Instead, he won the election by a landslide. The question here was not "why didn't the left win?" but "why did the left do so well?"

Surely there is a swathe of WWC voters who want their kids to grow up and go off to college and be more prosperous than is generally possible by sticking around their home towns. They're not a monolithic voting bloc by any means. But I don't think free college is a prime policy objective for most of these folks, even the ones who aren't of a provincial mindset. They have bigger fish to fry, most notably the slow death of their home towns - a death that is hastened by everyone who is able moving away to go to college and never coming back.

Free public university is a great idea, but I don't think it has any advantage in the short term, and only serves to alienate voters who you have to convince not to vote Republican next year. It's the kind of thing that for the next couple of cycles is best put in the party platform and never spoken about. After all, these people want to return to a time when you didn't need to go to college to have a comfortable life. I think it makes more sense to hit that as your theme, building an economy where you once again have jobs for people with high school diplomas and maybe a year or two of technical training (or not), rather than talk about paying to send everyone's kids away to college.

Yes, this is more or less what I'm saying is the reality - I don't think these WWC voters are necessarily going to die on the hill of 'no free college.' It just isn't an issue that gets them going, because as we both pointed out the economic issue for WWC voters is generally "how can I support a middle-class family lifestyle without a college degree?", not "how can I (or my kids) get a degree without going into six-figure debt?".

And Bernie was speaking to this first issue, so that when he talked about making college free I don't think it hurt him. For Hillary the calculation was different, because the WWC voters were more likely to interpret her calls for making college more affordable through the general lens of "this woman openly despises us, says we're a bunch of racists and sexists, says she wants to get rid of our jobs," etc. So when she was calling for making college affordable and talking about the knowledge economy and tomorrow's innovation workers and all that stuff, that was seen by those folks as saying "you people are obsolete."

Which, to a degree, is an accurate perception. You yourself have said things like "these people can't die soon enough, they're holding the rest of the country back." Aside from that cultural/messaging issue, which to an extent may have been a problem unique to Clinton, the Democrats just can't seem to conceive of an economic order that's different enough from the one we have now. Consequently the way they approach the whole problem of deindustrialization is not a political winner among the people who have been worst affected by deindustrialization.

So anyway tl:dr all I was saying is that the issue of free/affordable college isn't something that actively turns these people away, but it's also just not going to mobilize them.

Speaking more broadly to the issue raised by this thread I would say that the details of economic policies pushed are far, far less important than the vision that underlies your economic policy. For Bernie Sanders that vision was very clear, and that was an economy that puts people at the center. Clinton, OTOH, had "building an economy that works for everyone, not just a few millionaires". Now that's a nice idea, and I'm not sure whether the issue was the message itself or just that people didn't trust Clinton and so ignored the message, but it didn't work. And having participated in the Clinton campaign, and followed the campaign fairly closely in the news, I think Clinton did a pretty awful job of presenting a coherent vision that linked her various policy stances together into something that people could easily understand and would want to fight for. Anyone who, in 2016, could bring out "America is already great" with a straight face needs to be kept a minimum of 20 miles away from wherever the important decisions are going to be made in 2018.

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

The people who are most in favour of immigration and multiculturalism are the wealth elite
because immigration strengthens their bargaining position by firstly increasing the number of
employees competing for work and secondly breaking worker solidarity by national factionalism.

Are immigrants and current minorities, who generally speaking, are very pro immigration and multiculturalism, now the wealthy elite?

 

[civvver]

Because bernie and hillary didn't resonate with anyone. Obama did, his messaged reached people, especially the young. Bernie was shotdown immediately, labeled as a socialist (kind of a death mark in the US), and he was an old white dude who wasn't very inspiring. Everyone loathed hillary. Trump was incredibly divisive but his message resonated with his base. Conversely why did romney do so awful? Cus he was a stodgy white guy people felt they couldn't relate to. Well trump is a stodgy white guy your normal middle class citizen can't relate to but they still voted for him! Charisma wins. I don't think it's a matter of policy, but a little bit message and a lot more presentation. This goes back a long way, reagan had some of the dumbest policies historically but was so charismatic he won with some of the biggest margins ever. Bill clinton oozed charm. George bush came across as a relate able every man to many. Obama was a charismatic powerhouse.

They just need to find the right person to run, message doesn't matter as much sadly.

 

[metalhead]

Yes, this is more or less what I'm saying is the reality - I don't think these WWC voters are necessarily going to die on the hill of 'no free college.' It just isn't an issue that gets them going, because as we both pointed out the economic issue for WWC voters is generally "how can I support a middle-class family lifestyle without a college degree?", not "how can I (or my kids) get a degree without going into six-figure debt?".

And Bernie was speaking to this first issue, so that when he talked about making college free I don't think it hurt him. For Hillary the calculation was different, because the WWC voters were more likely to interpret her calls for making college more affordable through the general lens of "this woman openly despises us, says we're a bunch of racists and sexists, says she wants to get rid of our jobs," etc. So when she was calling for making college affordable and talking about the knowledge economy and tomorrow's innovation workers and all that stuff, that was seen by those folks as saying "you people are obsolete."

Which, to a degree, is an accurate perception. You yourself have said things like "these people can't die soon enough, they're holding the rest of the country back." Aside from that cultural/messaging issue, which to an extent may have been a problem unique to Clinton, the Democrats just can't seem to conceive of an economic order that's different enough from the one we have now. Consequently the way they approach the whole problem of deindustrialization is not a political winner among the people who have been worst affected by deindustrialization.

They are obsolete. I'm also not advocating for them dying sooner than they otherwise naturally would, but I do think their presence as a large voting bloc does stand in the way of accomplishing anything meaningful, and their deaths (or a radical shift in mindset) will be necessary to move economic policy forward. That's not to say some of their concerns aren't genuine issues that need addressing, but the answer can't be "We'll reopen your factories and send you all back to work!" There has to be another way, because that way only exists in fantasy land. Hillary's outlook in this regard was far more realistic than Trump's, but they're not ready to hear that yet. If they ever will be.

But yes, on the whole the Democrats have no economic plan of note that will actually spread the fruits of the modern economy to places that are being left behind by de-industrialization. I think on the whole, this is an area that is very ripe for the taking. Maybe instead of traditional "college," we leverage distance learning to allow kids to stay at home, earn degrees or requisite job training quickly, and contribute economically in their home towns if they so choose. I have no real idea what this would look like concretely, but it's what always pops into my mind when I think of making college more affordable/accessible to people in far-flung corners of the state. If the future economy exists mostly online, then people can prepare themselves for it and then plug into it from anywhere. I think that ought to be encouraged as much as possible.

 

[Sommerswerd]

They are obsolete. I'm also not advocating for them dying sooner than they otherwise naturally would, but I do think their presence as a large voting bloc does stand in the way of accomplishing anything meaningful, and their deaths (or a radical shift in mindset) will be necessary to move economic policy forward. That's not to say some of their concerns aren't genuine issues that need addressing, but the answer can't be "We'll reopen your factories and send you all back to work!" There has to be another way, because that way only exists in fantasy land. Hillary's outlook in this regard was far more realistic than Trump's, but they're not ready to hear that yet. If they ever will be.

Here is the problem (that I admit I don't have a solution for)... you can't say "They are obsolete, if only they would just wise up and realize that, they'd start voting for me". It just won't work. It cant work.

Because they won't vote for you if your platform is them being obsolete. They will fight you to the death. Frankly, even for sake of discussion, if they let you convince them that they are obsolete, they'd never admit that you'd convinced them, first of all, but even if they did subjectively adopt your line of thinking... they're not going to start voting for you, they're going to find someone else, who they view as on their side, with some plan to let them get back to work collecting a wage now, and work out all the details about their obsolescence later and give him the credit for showing them the light... Maybe reopening that abandoned factory and giving everyone a job-bank type position there, with a labor pool salary, while we find them a new job, one by one.

I don't know, I'm just I'm rambling now, so I'll stop.

 

[Lexicus]

Here is the problem (that I admit I don't have a solution for)... you can't say "They are obsolete, if only they would just wise up and realize that, they'd start voting for me". It just won't work. It cant work.

It's also a remarkably ugly sentiment that gets me back to wondering...what are the fundamental differences between Democrats and Republicans again? If Democrats aren't unconditionally upholding human dignity (and when you label people 'obsolete', you are doing the opposite), why do I care who wins?

 

[AdrienIer]

Corbyn entered the leadership race for Labour largely to get issues on the agenda, and to move the conversation. Instead, he won the election by a landslide. The question here was not "why didn't the left win?" but "why did the left do so well?"

Same happened with Hamon in France. There is a resurgence of actual leftists all around the world. It seems so far that they can energize a base (usually young and urban but not only) but that they can't get much further than that base. Maybe in a few years ?

 

[metalhead]

It's also a remarkably ugly sentiment that gets me back to wondering...what are the fundamental differences between Democrats and Republicans again? If Democrats aren't unconditionally upholding human dignity (and when you label people 'obsolete', you are doing the opposite), why do I care who wins?

It's only ugly if you believe a person's worth comes from their occupation. Unfortunately, a lot of people believe that their work is where their worth comes from, but I think that view is itself obsolete here in the United States, and has been ever since a person's ability to survive ceased to depend on them putting in a long day of manual labor just about every day of their life.

Thing is, they don't have to remain obsolete. Just because we'll never again have the need for factory workers that we once had, doesn't mean people who relied on factory work for their occupation are suddenly worthless. Far from it. I don't have any more than Sommer does in the way of actual answers, unfortunately, but obsolescence for people isn't a permanent state; that's the thing about people, there aren't all that many things a human can't become at least proficient in given the time and desire to become so.

I also think people would be receptive to a politician being honest with them. They know their factories aren't reopening. Obviously you don't want to traipse through small town theaters and union halls telling people they're obsolete, but I think striking a deal, where the government promises to hook their town up with broadband Internet and pay for some kind of job training that allows people to find employment, either remotely or by bringing employers to town, would be attractive.

 

[Sommerswerd]

It's also a remarkably ugly sentiment that gets me back to wondering...what are the fundamental differences between Democrats and Republicans again? If Democrats aren't unconditionally upholding human dignity (and when you label people 'obsolete', you are doing the opposite), why do I care who wins?

I think trying to reopen (or keep open) that mill, mine, factory, shipyard, dock, warehouse, plant etc is the only thing that reaches some folks... and frankly if Democrats dismiss it as impossible, they will lose everytime to the Republicans saying "Yes We Can"

It's only ugly if you believe a person's worth comes from their occupation. Unfortunately, a lot of people believe that their work is where their worth comes from, but I think that view is itself obsolete here in the United States, and has been ever since a person's ability to survive ceased to depend on them putting in a long day of manual labor just about every day of their life.

As you say, some people do believe it so you have to reach them...

 

[Lexicus]

It's only ugly if you believe a person's worth comes from their occupation.

On the contrary, saying someone is obsolete because their occupation is obsolete implies that a person's worth comes from their occupation.

 

[metalhead]

But a person is not a refrigerator. A person can stop being obsolete if they have the tools to do so. Most of us would be obsolete pretty quickly if we didn't avail ourselves of the tools to stay relevant in our respective occupations. An awful lot of people simply haven't been given the tools to do so, and have become obsolete as a result. That's where the worth of people comes from, partly, our ability to constantly better ourselves, learn new skills, get better at being a spouse, sibling, friend, and yes, worker.

 

[Lexicus]

The worth of people is inherent. It doesn't 'come from' anywhere, except our agreement to treat one another that way because the alternatives are worse.

Just as no person is illegal, no person is obsolete. Period. End of story. No debate permitted.

 

[Lohrenswald]

Not super sure if I am "contributing to the discussion" here, but here's a short piece responing to the VOX article
https://newrepublic.com/minutes/141293/vox-says-left-wing-economics-wont-defeat-trumpism-vox-wrong

“If Democrats really want to stop right-wing populists like Trump, they need a strategy that blunts the true drivers of their appeal—and that means focusing on more than economics,” he concludes. But this is not an argument against the left. In fact, this is close to what the left asks of the Democratic Party. The left does not want to discard identity politics in favor of a purely economic message. It is asking for a more coherent identity politics, one that realizes that Trump has tapped into a specific combination of racism and economic grievance.

 

[metalhead]

The worth of people is inherent. It doesn't 'come from' anywhere, except our agreement to treat one another that way because the alternatives are worse.

Just as no person is illegal, no person is obsolete. Period. End of story. No debate permitted.

I thought I was pretty clear in saying that our worth comes from an innate property that we all have, that it's something inherent.

 

[Lohrenswald]

But a person is not a refrigerator. A person can stop being obsolete if they have the tools to do so. Most of us would be obsolete pretty quickly if we didn't avail ourselves of the tools to stay relevant in our respective occupations. An awful lot of people simply haven't been given the tools to do so, and have become obsolete as a result. That's where the worth of people comes from, partly, our ability to constantly better ourselves, learn new skills, get better at being a spouse, sibling, friend, and yes, worker.

this is also a pretty dumb sentiment I think, because if like the point of humans producing stuff is to serve the needs of humans. So like, assigning the value of people to that they produce is like kinda circular

 

[Lexicus]

I thought I was pretty clear in saying that our worth comes from an innate property that we all have, that it's something inherent.

That's interesting. Because to me it looked like you were saying our worth comes from an alleged propensity that, to me, seems pretty grounded in contemporary white-collar professional-class culture, rather than being inherent to our status as people.

Anyway, moving away from this sort of philosophical stuff, saying that people are obsolete sends a message that's more or less the opposite of the one I think you want to send.

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

Not super sure if I am "contributing to the discussion" here, but here's a short piece responing to the VOX article
https://newrepublic.com/minutes/141293/vox-says-left-wing-economics-wont-defeat-trumpism-vox-wrong

This is interesting, but it runs into a big problem vis a vis Bernie and others, like Elizabeth Warren, who have spent a lot of airtime railing against big corporate and financial interests; they haven't been able to connect to people of colour. Neither of them have much support from American minorities. Now, I think part of that can be chalked up to the politicians themselves - Bernie frustrated a lot of black media outlets in refusing to go on their podcasts/shows/etc., and Warren has the baggage of a NE 'elitist' to an extent, but my fear is that a Bernie who suddenly starts canvassing black and latino support harder will lose the white votes he did surprisingly well with.

Dems as a whole right now are towing a line where they need to continue to grow their support among the youth and influx of non-white voters, but for the next 20 years or so, they still need to grab enough white voters, somehow, to not take a bunch of short-term lumps.