The Jacobin Left’s vision must be incredibly powerful to mask the history of those times in which it gained power. Few people want to live in a society where politics intrudes on every aspect of life, where friends and family are potential informants, and where one’s thoughts must be suppressed.
Even the leaders of such societies live in terror. Everyone in the Soviet Union’s communist party, for example, was subject to Stalin’s purges - purges meant to eliminate potential rivals because even Stalin himself lived in constant fear.
The cancel culture of American universities is a pale imitation of the Soviet terror, yet we read of progressive professors who admit to being afraid of their own students.
Few would vote for such a world of constant terror, oppression, and despair. Such regimes must be instituted by revolution or other undemocratic means and hidden behind a veil of lies.
Quite. Part of the trick here is, “if it was bad, it wasn’t us”. The vision can only lead to good things, so if it led to bad things, clearly it was either not the correct vision, or it was not done right. But we, we have updated, so none of that applies to us.
Hence the “proper Communism has never been tried” or “that is not authentic Marxism” lines that are regularly trotted out.
Nowadays, folk have an even bigger barrier to connecting the dots, they simply do not see themselves as any sort of Marxist, any sort of Communist. “What we do is completely different, so none of that applies to us.” Their Left does not include Lenin, Stalin, Mao … etc.
This is why I am so insistent on pointing out the intrusion of new-type commissars, the new-type Zhdanovism, the new-type Lysenkoism, the new-type censorship. Ex-Soviet bloc folk completely get it, but a lot of oh-so-smart Westerners simply don’t, because they have the above tricks to insulate themselves, even if they do have some inkling of the history of C20th totalitarianism, which many do not.
Marxism doesn't really fit the modern economic debate because the problems it sought to solve were actually solved (far better) by the postwar social contract. The big promise made to the masses was: "we'll supply you with growth so you won't demand a redistribution of wealth". It worked for a few decades but growth ended because the elites got greedy again and returned economies back to extracting rents.
Few left activists actually even know what they are talking about - irrespective of the validity of the base ideology. To them "capitalism" just means having to pay for things, "Marxism" = whatever is good, activism has descended to the level of barracking for your football team and creating rationalisations why we were robbed of the premiership.
The “that's not the left I remember” reminds me of older feminists who loathe newer feminism or even often see themselves as its victim, especially where it seeks to enforce “trans rights” against them. But the furious rejection of all biology (“one is made into a woman”) is also found among them; any reference to something “natural” (motherhood, for example) was angrily wiped away. In the same way, in older feminism you find the vicious demonization of the assumed opponent, in their case: the man; I know of feminist publications where hatred of men dripped from every page. Now they are complaining about this very hatred that they are receiving from the new feminism, but in many ways it is just a continuation of their own positions and behavior.
Another great post, which for me includes providing so many well phrased expressions that I probably won't select or highlight all of them for comment.
Before I forget to ask, are some of these recent posts also planned for your book project with Helen Dale? Or how is that project coming? Partly delayed by new work contracts as I recall?
Also, thank you for the reference to Joseph Heath's Substack In Due Course and his discussion of the primacy of culture or politics in the resulting social developments or direction. Then again, perhaps cursing you is also in order for further complicating my life with extra distractions!! :-)
"Yet it is precisely the Left that does include Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Mengistu, Ceausescu and so on whose echoes are being played out in our societies."
Oh, you were so close. This is the Trotskyite position! We are the truest of true believers, the purveyors of perpetual Revolution, not the degenerate [and inevitable outcome of our beliefs]. Only after passing through this phase can one turn one's disaffection into neo-conservatism (and now post-Trump, neo-liberalism). Of course not everyone gets past the Trotskyite phase and we are still entertained by those harboring the deepest of delusions.
"Equality is regularly invoked as the over-arching value of the Left. But the entire claim to the trumping moral urgency of the central vision; the claim to superior understanding of social dynamics; of the centrality of Theory; of the need to centralise and coordinate social action for achieving that transformative future; is a claim to be the superior deciders."
This is very true, but also interesting as to its success in mobilizing action. It could not succeed without the value of equality being deeply embedded within Western Culture. I am not sure what the answer is other than challenging this fundamental tenet of our historical culture.
Maybe we can be more precise about its definition. For me, equality means the recognition of every person as an individual human being, not to be put down for characteristics such as sex, skin colour etc, ideally allowed to flourish to the limits of their particular talents. Which does *not* encompass the idea of equity of outcome - some people will always be more intelligent, funnier, more attractive, etc. It's tricky, but surely worth the effort?
I recommend Robert Nisbet's The Quest for Community to you. It goes into exquisite detail on the dynamic and tension between individualism and equality as Enlightenment values.
Interesting insights, as usual. However, I have the impression that the ambition to provide an overarching narrative of the Left through history, from the French Revolution to this day, lead to loss of nuance. For example, for all its faults, the EU has been instrumental in entrenching the principles of liberal-democratic capitalism across countries variously affected by fascism, communism in their different national variations (actually, this is the main fault that the hard Left and the hard Right find with it). I would also not forget that there is a big difference - to put it mildly - between the cancellation as practiced by the current Left and that - of more physical variety - practiced by its supposed antecedents.
The best thing about the EU is the requirement to be a democracy to be a member. Adding a layer of poor accountability over the top, less so. There is a very good argument to be made that the EU has come to degrade, not improve, European economic performance.
The “ever closer union” project has a certain Hegelian, history has a proper direction to it, element that is at some tension with the contingency of democratic choice.
Adding in various elite agendas to EU policy has provided coverage for more authoritarian politics that a less policy-prescriptive EU would be a much less plausible foil for. Nor was a former EU Commissioner boasting about the cancellation of Romanian Presidential election a good moment. Nor the EU official who had to be publicly squashed by the EU Commission President because he thought he could censor the Musk-Trump interview.
Using international organisations to launder ideas is by no means a problem specific to the Jacobin Left. However, they have been quite well-placed to take advantage of it. Notably with the UN and education policy.
There is an old joke about democracy ending the moment people discover they can vote themselves other people's money - this applies to the EU in spades. Look at the CAP which works just like the farm subsidy mafia in the USA.
The EU has crossed the threshold of too many minnow members who are net-consumers of resources and never-will-be contributors. With Poland I can see eventually switching to net-contributor so the investment will be worth it, with Slovakia not so much.
Same issue with NATO members who have no real capacity to contribute to security but carry a liability to defend. Both organisations should have created 2-speed structures such as membership without voting rights. Actually $input = %vote would be a great idea in general for supranational entities.
On the matter of cancel culture, yes destroying people’s careers, businesses and reputations is not the same as executing them, or sticking them in labour camps. It is, however, an attempt to impose a form of social death on them and the cancellors seem to be keen enough to punish people up to the limits of their power to do so. Which suggests it is a question of power, not of any sense of moral constraint.
One of the more objectionable practices of Apartheid South Africa was banishment (which did not mean exile) and was perhaps the most powerful weapon to keep whites conforming to the regime.
The EU took formerly democratic States and shifted their governing powers onto the unrepresentive and unaccountable. I'm not sure how you see that as entrenching liberal democratic principles.
I abandoned the right in the US after Bush and Iraq, only to discover how insane the Jacobin left really is... Started drifting away when I noticed Obama promising things like equality of outcome between men and women ("fixing the gender wage gap").
Makes me wonder if I was ever a useful idiot.
There's some commonality between the Neocon right and the Postmodern Jacobins: a denial of history and human nature, promises of a better future that result in disaster... It's not clear to me, either, what the most dangerous markers are.
Equality of outcome is a problem with the left that does not exist on the right, but the Venn diagram does overlap - support for things like censorship ("free speech zones" back in the Bush era), a utopian vision (for foreign policy with Neocons, domestic policy for the Jacobins), I'm sure there are others.
The left is certainly more susceptible because of the fact that its religious impulses are carried out in politics, but it seems to me that a more granular view of what is and is not acceptable is probably in order.
I note that the NeoCons were often ex-Left folk. Their confidence in nation-building was certainly a grand social project to be done by virtuous state action.
But yes, all political traditions are subject to metastasising forms. And the exigencies and corruptions of power are a general problem, not one specific to some political tradition.
You’re going to have to define liberal-democratic capitalism for us. Per my own observation, the EU is illiberal (we’re really freer despite the inundation of regulation, the authoritarian crusade against misinformation etc.?); anti-democratic (ask the Romanians, ask the people who vote for Le Pen, AfD, Reform etc.); and, in the guise of environmentalism or concern for public health, permits only a debauched form of capitalism that increasingly looks like socialism.
No - the EU is a totalitarian monolith that seeks to impose by stealth a deadening, increasingly far-left, conformity on its unfortunate subjects. It is not liberal, democratic or capitalist in any meaningful sense of any of those words.
Well, then perhaps we can use it as a good example of a bad example? :-)
But isn't it also an example of Lorenzo's discussion of achieving social and political aims via networked activism rather than top down party dictates? Even the populist and rightist parties forming coalitions to counter this trend appear to need their own networked activism across Europe to be successful.
If they can focus their attention on implementing nuclear energy instead of renewables then they may regain the energy base/foundation they need to reinvigorate their industry, too.
Plus a growing recognition of their need to sacrifice funding of social programs to support more resources (% of GDP) towards their military preparedness can also bridge individual party allegiances. [Am I equating the EU and NATO in a way that is not justified?]
"As a description of how the Left works by updating and abandoning [it, the Dialectic] is pretty close to spot on. It is Thomas Sowell’s Unconstrained Vision operationalised, including by being regularly updated, discarding who and what is no longer useful. The notion that Homo sapiens can be profoundly transformed by appropriate social action; that there are final solutions to social problems; that we are not embedded in a web of trade-offs all the way down—this is the core vision."
This is one of the best and suscinct summaries of Sowell's ideas about "visions" that I have ever read. Too bad he couldn't have published his ideas in 1887 (instead of 1987) to counter Woodrow Wilson and the (US) Progressives in their cradle. But as a core element of human nature, and presumably a component of our evolved psychology, I suppose both types of vision would have made their appearance in modern society by the 1930's in any case. I now recall there was a movement called Social Gospel arising in the late 19th C as well.
"As modern societies have seen huge increases in both university graduates and bureaucratisation—... —Labour and Social Democratic Parties have drifted away from their working class electoral base."
But haven't many of these people simply found slots in either non-political or marginally political bureaucracies? The clerical and advisory roles in insurance, sales, or logistics firms, for example? In that sense they are also still a working class, even when they believe their educational attainment justifies them having a more influential position?*
Then the Jacobins in academia, the media, and entertainment still speak for this group rather than representing them, but they all have similar levels of institutional credentialism? And this "worker class" may also still have jaundiced views of the "elites" trying to represent them, thus also supporting populist orientations?
*somewhere I read about the top 90% of earners still chaffing under the realization that they do not have sufficient resources (compared to the 99%ers) to make the kinds of political donations that might really impact achieving whatever agenda they favor.
If you're aware of elite overproduction then strap yourself in and peek at what the coming AI wave will do. 90% of knowledge based jobs will basically disappear because that knowledge is available to any-comer with a screen. As you pointed out many "while collar" jobs are actually working class, just wait till they aren't needed at all.
The mystery for me is if robots, AI, and automation do not need or make any economic demands (beyond their own maintenance), then when all/most/many of the humans with their "infinite" desires are unemployed, just what economic demand will there be to justify the creation of wealth via AI, et al.?
Does Say's Law operate in that situation? At the moment I don't favor it, but perhaps some form of UBI will in fact end up being the needed response to provide that economic "raison d'etre". Will we see more analyses of the "Star Trek" economy?
Other questions arise, such as can or will AI actually learn something that a human has not learned previously? Presumably the machine can recognize some patterns in a vast amount of data that a human would miss, but would it recognize the value of that new insight if a human hasn't asked the initial question first? What does creativity mean in such a program controlled environment?
Is our national and global economy so complex and interconnected that AI and automation cannot replace all of it? Probably, at least not for 2 to 5 decades? Are there critical material resources that will be tapped out or "peak", and restrict the national or global reach?
There are no guarantees that humanity has the ability to adapt to such a proposed new environment, but I suspect human foibles will upset any overly idealistic concepts proposed by tech or nontech elites.
AI will unleash a massive gain in short term productivity - but the gain will be captured by a small elite, just like all economic gains in the present rentierised economy. It will work just like globalisation did - firstly some people gained from it so they thought it was good. Only then did they lose THEIR job.
Creativity is mostly just applying an analogy to a new subject. What is the diff between AI created junk vs human created junk? Most human creativity is actually mundane, the Van Goghs are 1/trillion. There is actually a funny analogy between AI and Hollywood since AI just regurgitates what its fed, and Hollywood now mostly reboots movies & makes sequels.
We are nowhere near Star Trek levels of post-scarcity, since we still need burger flippers. Robots & molecular printers need to come first. Remember the quantum computing revolution is also just around the corner and IOT is already in full swing.
Even in the medium term I can't see any future without a UBI for the majority. The Aus economy is especially vulnerable because we have a small, highly concentrated population with English and open borders, and don't really produce anything - the only demand we supply is demand to come live here.
I like this the least of your recent posts that I have read. It is a dim tactic of the saloon bar right to cast the Left as a mix of Pol Pot and the Committee for Public Safety. In most of the Anglosphere the traditional Left have been social democrats, from the formation of their political parties at the start of the last century till the noughties, which is when the gender n Gaza nutters gained hold.
Following on from your botched premise, the rest of the article comes over as Rightist polemic.
I like Lorenzo's writing but there were simply too many big words, too close together for me to keep up. I feel it was written more for people already steeped in politics than for the casual reader. However, since it has garnered lots of 'likes' it's probably just my fuzzy, Sunday morning, 65-year-old brain.
One wonders how society will look like 50 years from now. In just 15 years we have normalized faggotry (all the middle class youth is doing it and everyone is "okay with it"), something that was shunned for milennia in 99% of cultures. In 20 years we have normalized not smoking, which to me is still absurd. In 50 years we have normalized mixed-race relationships, and in 100 years we have elevated women to having political rights.
One wonders how the complete anihilation of normality can corraborate with your thesis of "they want control". I think they want sheer chaos. The more the better.
The US and other sane democratic republics have been aiming for a few centuries now to achieve a balance between tyranny on one hand and anarchy on the other. Plus Lorenzo did provide a reference to a variety of personality types that might help explain this "diversity" or dichotomy against normality that you mention.
The Jacobin Left’s vision must be incredibly powerful to mask the history of those times in which it gained power. Few people want to live in a society where politics intrudes on every aspect of life, where friends and family are potential informants, and where one’s thoughts must be suppressed.
Even the leaders of such societies live in terror. Everyone in the Soviet Union’s communist party, for example, was subject to Stalin’s purges - purges meant to eliminate potential rivals because even Stalin himself lived in constant fear.
The cancel culture of American universities is a pale imitation of the Soviet terror, yet we read of progressive professors who admit to being afraid of their own students.
Few would vote for such a world of constant terror, oppression, and despair. Such regimes must be instituted by revolution or other undemocratic means and hidden behind a veil of lies.
Quite. Part of the trick here is, “if it was bad, it wasn’t us”. The vision can only lead to good things, so if it led to bad things, clearly it was either not the correct vision, or it was not done right. But we, we have updated, so none of that applies to us.
Hence the “proper Communism has never been tried” or “that is not authentic Marxism” lines that are regularly trotted out.
Nowadays, folk have an even bigger barrier to connecting the dots, they simply do not see themselves as any sort of Marxist, any sort of Communist. “What we do is completely different, so none of that applies to us.” Their Left does not include Lenin, Stalin, Mao … etc.
This is why I am so insistent on pointing out the intrusion of new-type commissars, the new-type Zhdanovism, the new-type Lysenkoism, the new-type censorship. Ex-Soviet bloc folk completely get it, but a lot of oh-so-smart Westerners simply don’t, because they have the above tricks to insulate themselves, even if they do have some inkling of the history of C20th totalitarianism, which many do not.
"Nowadays, folk have an even bigger barrier to connecting the dots,..."
Which is why we are so lucky to have you to help us see those connections!
[Seriously, not snark.]
Marxism doesn't really fit the modern economic debate because the problems it sought to solve were actually solved (far better) by the postwar social contract. The big promise made to the masses was: "we'll supply you with growth so you won't demand a redistribution of wealth". It worked for a few decades but growth ended because the elites got greedy again and returned economies back to extracting rents.
Few left activists actually even know what they are talking about - irrespective of the validity of the base ideology. To them "capitalism" just means having to pay for things, "Marxism" = whatever is good, activism has descended to the level of barracking for your football team and creating rationalisations why we were robbed of the premiership.
The “that's not the left I remember” reminds me of older feminists who loathe newer feminism or even often see themselves as its victim, especially where it seeks to enforce “trans rights” against them. But the furious rejection of all biology (“one is made into a woman”) is also found among them; any reference to something “natural” (motherhood, for example) was angrily wiped away. In the same way, in older feminism you find the vicious demonization of the assumed opponent, in their case: the man; I know of feminist publications where hatred of men dripped from every page. Now they are complaining about this very hatred that they are receiving from the new feminism, but in many ways it is just a continuation of their own positions and behavior.
Another great post, which for me includes providing so many well phrased expressions that I probably won't select or highlight all of them for comment.
Before I forget to ask, are some of these recent posts also planned for your book project with Helen Dale? Or how is that project coming? Partly delayed by new work contracts as I recall?
Also, thank you for the reference to Joseph Heath's Substack In Due Course and his discussion of the primacy of culture or politics in the resulting social developments or direction. Then again, perhaps cursing you is also in order for further complicating my life with extra distractions!! :-)
"Yet it is precisely the Left that does include Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Mengistu, Ceausescu and so on whose echoes are being played out in our societies."
Oh, you were so close. This is the Trotskyite position! We are the truest of true believers, the purveyors of perpetual Revolution, not the degenerate [and inevitable outcome of our beliefs]. Only after passing through this phase can one turn one's disaffection into neo-conservatism (and now post-Trump, neo-liberalism). Of course not everyone gets past the Trotskyite phase and we are still entertained by those harboring the deepest of delusions.
"Equality is regularly invoked as the over-arching value of the Left. But the entire claim to the trumping moral urgency of the central vision; the claim to superior understanding of social dynamics; of the centrality of Theory; of the need to centralise and coordinate social action for achieving that transformative future; is a claim to be the superior deciders."
This is very true, but also interesting as to its success in mobilizing action. It could not succeed without the value of equality being deeply embedded within Western Culture. I am not sure what the answer is other than challenging this fundamental tenet of our historical culture.
Maybe we can be more precise about its definition. For me, equality means the recognition of every person as an individual human being, not to be put down for characteristics such as sex, skin colour etc, ideally allowed to flourish to the limits of their particular talents. Which does *not* encompass the idea of equity of outcome - some people will always be more intelligent, funnier, more attractive, etc. It's tricky, but surely worth the effort?
I recommend Robert Nisbet's The Quest for Community to you. It goes into exquisite detail on the dynamic and tension between individualism and equality as Enlightenment values.
Thank you! Much appreciated.
Interesting insights, as usual. However, I have the impression that the ambition to provide an overarching narrative of the Left through history, from the French Revolution to this day, lead to loss of nuance. For example, for all its faults, the EU has been instrumental in entrenching the principles of liberal-democratic capitalism across countries variously affected by fascism, communism in their different national variations (actually, this is the main fault that the hard Left and the hard Right find with it). I would also not forget that there is a big difference - to put it mildly - between the cancellation as practiced by the current Left and that - of more physical variety - practiced by its supposed antecedents.
The best thing about the EU is the requirement to be a democracy to be a member. Adding a layer of poor accountability over the top, less so. There is a very good argument to be made that the EU has come to degrade, not improve, European economic performance.
The “ever closer union” project has a certain Hegelian, history has a proper direction to it, element that is at some tension with the contingency of democratic choice.
Adding in various elite agendas to EU policy has provided coverage for more authoritarian politics that a less policy-prescriptive EU would be a much less plausible foil for. Nor was a former EU Commissioner boasting about the cancellation of Romanian Presidential election a good moment. Nor the EU official who had to be publicly squashed by the EU Commission President because he thought he could censor the Musk-Trump interview.
Using international organisations to launder ideas is by no means a problem specific to the Jacobin Left. However, they have been quite well-placed to take advantage of it. Notably with the UN and education policy.
There is an old joke about democracy ending the moment people discover they can vote themselves other people's money - this applies to the EU in spades. Look at the CAP which works just like the farm subsidy mafia in the USA.
The EU has crossed the threshold of too many minnow members who are net-consumers of resources and never-will-be contributors. With Poland I can see eventually switching to net-contributor so the investment will be worth it, with Slovakia not so much.
Same issue with NATO members who have no real capacity to contribute to security but carry a liability to defend. Both organisations should have created 2-speed structures such as membership without voting rights. Actually $input = %vote would be a great idea in general for supranational entities.
On the matter of cancel culture, yes destroying people’s careers, businesses and reputations is not the same as executing them, or sticking them in labour camps. It is, however, an attempt to impose a form of social death on them and the cancellors seem to be keen enough to punish people up to the limits of their power to do so. Which suggests it is a question of power, not of any sense of moral constraint.
One of the more objectionable practices of Apartheid South Africa was banishment (which did not mean exile) and was perhaps the most powerful weapon to keep whites conforming to the regime.
The EU took formerly democratic States and shifted their governing powers onto the unrepresentive and unaccountable. I'm not sure how you see that as entrenching liberal democratic principles.
I abandoned the right in the US after Bush and Iraq, only to discover how insane the Jacobin left really is... Started drifting away when I noticed Obama promising things like equality of outcome between men and women ("fixing the gender wage gap").
Makes me wonder if I was ever a useful idiot.
There's some commonality between the Neocon right and the Postmodern Jacobins: a denial of history and human nature, promises of a better future that result in disaster... It's not clear to me, either, what the most dangerous markers are.
Equality of outcome is a problem with the left that does not exist on the right, but the Venn diagram does overlap - support for things like censorship ("free speech zones" back in the Bush era), a utopian vision (for foreign policy with Neocons, domestic policy for the Jacobins), I'm sure there are others.
The left is certainly more susceptible because of the fact that its religious impulses are carried out in politics, but it seems to me that a more granular view of what is and is not acceptable is probably in order.
I note that the NeoCons were often ex-Left folk. Their confidence in nation-building was certainly a grand social project to be done by virtuous state action.
But yes, all political traditions are subject to metastasising forms. And the exigencies and corruptions of power are a general problem, not one specific to some political tradition.
If you can't be a totalitarian in your own nation, you can use the military to take control in another country where you can.
I wouldn’t call their program totalitarian. I would call it all sorts of other things, the politest of which is mistaken, but not that.
You’re going to have to define liberal-democratic capitalism for us. Per my own observation, the EU is illiberal (we’re really freer despite the inundation of regulation, the authoritarian crusade against misinformation etc.?); anti-democratic (ask the Romanians, ask the people who vote for Le Pen, AfD, Reform etc.); and, in the guise of environmentalism or concern for public health, permits only a debauched form of capitalism that increasingly looks like socialism.
No - the EU is a totalitarian monolith that seeks to impose by stealth a deadening, increasingly far-left, conformity on its unfortunate subjects. It is not liberal, democratic or capitalist in any meaningful sense of any of those words.
Well, then perhaps we can use it as a good example of a bad example? :-)
But isn't it also an example of Lorenzo's discussion of achieving social and political aims via networked activism rather than top down party dictates? Even the populist and rightist parties forming coalitions to counter this trend appear to need their own networked activism across Europe to be successful.
If they can focus their attention on implementing nuclear energy instead of renewables then they may regain the energy base/foundation they need to reinvigorate their industry, too.
Plus a growing recognition of their need to sacrifice funding of social programs to support more resources (% of GDP) towards their military preparedness can also bridge individual party allegiances. [Am I equating the EU and NATO in a way that is not justified?]
"As a description of how the Left works by updating and abandoning [it, the Dialectic] is pretty close to spot on. It is Thomas Sowell’s Unconstrained Vision operationalised, including by being regularly updated, discarding who and what is no longer useful. The notion that Homo sapiens can be profoundly transformed by appropriate social action; that there are final solutions to social problems; that we are not embedded in a web of trade-offs all the way down—this is the core vision."
This is one of the best and suscinct summaries of Sowell's ideas about "visions" that I have ever read. Too bad he couldn't have published his ideas in 1887 (instead of 1987) to counter Woodrow Wilson and the (US) Progressives in their cradle. But as a core element of human nature, and presumably a component of our evolved psychology, I suppose both types of vision would have made their appearance in modern society by the 1930's in any case. I now recall there was a movement called Social Gospel arising in the late 19th C as well.
"As modern societies have seen huge increases in both university graduates and bureaucratisation—... —Labour and Social Democratic Parties have drifted away from their working class electoral base."
But haven't many of these people simply found slots in either non-political or marginally political bureaucracies? The clerical and advisory roles in insurance, sales, or logistics firms, for example? In that sense they are also still a working class, even when they believe their educational attainment justifies them having a more influential position?*
Then the Jacobins in academia, the media, and entertainment still speak for this group rather than representing them, but they all have similar levels of institutional credentialism? And this "worker class" may also still have jaundiced views of the "elites" trying to represent them, thus also supporting populist orientations?
*somewhere I read about the top 90% of earners still chaffing under the realization that they do not have sufficient resources (compared to the 99%ers) to make the kinds of political donations that might really impact achieving whatever agenda they favor.
If you're aware of elite overproduction then strap yourself in and peek at what the coming AI wave will do. 90% of knowledge based jobs will basically disappear because that knowledge is available to any-comer with a screen. As you pointed out many "while collar" jobs are actually working class, just wait till they aren't needed at all.
The mystery for me is if robots, AI, and automation do not need or make any economic demands (beyond their own maintenance), then when all/most/many of the humans with their "infinite" desires are unemployed, just what economic demand will there be to justify the creation of wealth via AI, et al.?
Does Say's Law operate in that situation? At the moment I don't favor it, but perhaps some form of UBI will in fact end up being the needed response to provide that economic "raison d'etre". Will we see more analyses of the "Star Trek" economy?
Other questions arise, such as can or will AI actually learn something that a human has not learned previously? Presumably the machine can recognize some patterns in a vast amount of data that a human would miss, but would it recognize the value of that new insight if a human hasn't asked the initial question first? What does creativity mean in such a program controlled environment?
Is our national and global economy so complex and interconnected that AI and automation cannot replace all of it? Probably, at least not for 2 to 5 decades? Are there critical material resources that will be tapped out or "peak", and restrict the national or global reach?
There are no guarantees that humanity has the ability to adapt to such a proposed new environment, but I suspect human foibles will upset any overly idealistic concepts proposed by tech or nontech elites.
AI will unleash a massive gain in short term productivity - but the gain will be captured by a small elite, just like all economic gains in the present rentierised economy. It will work just like globalisation did - firstly some people gained from it so they thought it was good. Only then did they lose THEIR job.
Creativity is mostly just applying an analogy to a new subject. What is the diff between AI created junk vs human created junk? Most human creativity is actually mundane, the Van Goghs are 1/trillion. There is actually a funny analogy between AI and Hollywood since AI just regurgitates what its fed, and Hollywood now mostly reboots movies & makes sequels.
We are nowhere near Star Trek levels of post-scarcity, since we still need burger flippers. Robots & molecular printers need to come first. Remember the quantum computing revolution is also just around the corner and IOT is already in full swing.
Even in the medium term I can't see any future without a UBI for the majority. The Aus economy is especially vulnerable because we have a small, highly concentrated population with English and open borders, and don't really produce anything - the only demand we supply is demand to come live here.
I like this the least of your recent posts that I have read. It is a dim tactic of the saloon bar right to cast the Left as a mix of Pol Pot and the Committee for Public Safety. In most of the Anglosphere the traditional Left have been social democrats, from the formation of their political parties at the start of the last century till the noughties, which is when the gender n Gaza nutters gained hold.
Following on from your botched premise, the rest of the article comes over as Rightist polemic.
I like Lorenzo's writing but there were simply too many big words, too close together for me to keep up. I feel it was written more for people already steeped in politics than for the casual reader. However, since it has garnered lots of 'likes' it's probably just my fuzzy, Sunday morning, 65-year-old brain.
With the Churchification of the Academe, Pol Pot doesn't seem completely unreasonable....
One wonders how society will look like 50 years from now. In just 15 years we have normalized faggotry (all the middle class youth is doing it and everyone is "okay with it"), something that was shunned for milennia in 99% of cultures. In 20 years we have normalized not smoking, which to me is still absurd. In 50 years we have normalized mixed-race relationships, and in 100 years we have elevated women to having political rights.
One wonders how the complete anihilation of normality can corraborate with your thesis of "they want control". I think they want sheer chaos. The more the better.
The US and other sane democratic republics have been aiming for a few centuries now to achieve a balance between tyranny on one hand and anarchy on the other. Plus Lorenzo did provide a reference to a variety of personality types that might help explain this "diversity" or dichotomy against normality that you mention.