Rugged Individualism
"Socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor."
I think this captures a significant aspect of our culture.
I realize more and more the importance of power in numbers, and that almost anything worth achieving can be done easier (and sometimes only) with groups of people working together. After writing this down, it feels like a truism -- and while that may be accurate, I don't see it showing up in our society (the United States) to the degree it does in others.
A major part of keeping the ruling minority class in the position they are, is keeping the majority divided. Most of us know this, and it takes various forms: race, social issues, religion, geographical area, etcetera. But one of the greatest (and easily overlooked) ways of keeping people apart is by encouraging the internalization of "rugged individualism" as an ideal.
I'd like to get reactions to this assertion from the Forum.
The below is from Richard Wolff, which I transcribed from an interview I found online. I think he captures it well.
What do we make of this? And what can we do about it? Does it show up in the attitudes of people around you, and perhaps yourself?
Source of quote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUw8bkRzHEE
I think this captures a significant aspect of our culture.
I realize more and more the importance of power in numbers, and that almost anything worth achieving can be done easier (and sometimes only) with groups of people working together. After writing this down, it feels like a truism -- and while that may be accurate, I don't see it showing up in our society (the United States) to the degree it does in others.
A major part of keeping the ruling minority class in the position they are, is keeping the majority divided. Most of us know this, and it takes various forms: race, social issues, religion, geographical area, etcetera. But one of the greatest (and easily overlooked) ways of keeping people apart is by encouraging the internalization of "rugged individualism" as an ideal.
I'd like to get reactions to this assertion from the Forum.
The below is from Richard Wolff, which I transcribed from an interview I found online. I think he captures it well.
Richard Wolff: [b]What's the single biggest missing element on the Left today? I would say to you it's not raising consciousness -- although we need to do that. It's not understanding -- although we need that. And it's not the numbers -- we have those. We don't have any organization.
We're the most disorganized left I know of. It's an amazing testimony, in my judgment, to the isolation, individualism, and ideological underdevelopment of the American left that it cannot make organization -- or to put it otherwise: it shrinks away, hesitates, is skeptical, worried all the time that an organization will "rob me of my individuality", it'll "tell me what to do," etc., even though you spend your whole life in a school or a job where you're told what to do by people all the time, but when it comes to your volunteer political activity you don't want that (partly because you have to suffer it everywhere else, you don't want it here). This is a lovely idea, but that ain't gonna work. You're not going to confront a system as organized as capitalism is by simply hugging it to death, that's not gonna work. You need organizations.
It's possible to have organizations that are not oppressive, and not arbitrary; it's possible -- it's hard, but it's possible. But if you don't try, you're disarming yourself and the system can afford to ignore you.
I used to think that the Right was powerful, I now travel around the country doing a lot of public speaking -- Texas, California, everywhere in between -- the Left, which I knew was there, is much bigger and in many ways much deeper than the Right. [...]
Whatever it is about American capitalism that has achieved that, that's the most important item protecting American Capitalism, in my view -- it's not the military, it's not the Republicans, it's that.[/b]
What do we make of this? And what can we do about it? Does it show up in the attitudes of people around you, and perhaps yourself?
Source of quote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUw8bkRzHEE
Comments (92)
:100:
Not much else to say, but that never stopped me. Notwithstanding what the right says about the left being sheeple, the simple fact is, they are cats. You can't herd cats. The right, however, loves a strong leader who tells them what they want to hear, and they will fall in goosestep behind him (or, her, if she's hot).
When practicing law, I used to sit in on meetings of various environmental groups. Jeesh! I came away thinking, no one hates the left more than the left. Or, if that was politics, I want none of it.
But yes, the Plutocracy creates division in the lower classes and there you have it.
As a side note, I saw so many working class people who refused to avail themselves of any government services (that they had paid for with their tax dollars) because they "didn't want to be no welfare queen!" They end up physically broke down in a hovel somewhere and dying early. Oh well.
I don't think that's fair, actually. The "Left" (if they can be called that) fell right in line with Obama. At first it was borderline cultish, and it dissipated. The people who worship Trump didn't seem to get as disillusioned, but there were very different circumstances that accounts for that (social media and education levels come to mind).
Regardless, I think your point demonstrates how we separate ourselves from others and keep divisions going. I do this as well -- it's very difficult not to, when it looks as though one side is becoming a death cult. I wonder how I would have reacted to the rise of the National Socialist Party in the 30s if I were a German citizen, for example...what would have been the proper response (pre-Holocaust?)...given that Trumpism is even more dangerous, I don't think a Kumbaya attitude is appropriate. In that case, it's very hard to want to find any common ground with these people.
On the other hand, they're also deluded, mainly by outside factors (like media) coming from above that targets and exploits them -- their fears of changing demographics, their working class conditions, their latent racism, their lack of education, and the fears and values that have been instilled in them for the last 30 years (from "they're coming for our guns" to "keep government out of my social security").
Although you didn't ask, I personally tend more and more to want to talk with those who are already "there" mentally, or are at least reasonable. I'm not too interested in the die-hard Trump crowd -- they're a spectacle, and can't be ignored, but since they've shown they're immune to reason the only way to deal with them is to overpower them with a greater force -- a bigger army, so to speak (and of not just voters).
Quoting James Riley
That's interesting. Or look at the Republican states denying medicaid expansion or federal unemployment funding. It's truly insane. But that's where we are.
It’s true. Individualism is a problem for any collectivist project. Mao saw this well enough and wrote about it in his “Combat Liberalism. Mao’s solution was to “strengthen education”, “conduct affairs, make assignments and enforce discipline in a proper way”. I supposed it worked because the CCP will be celebrating its centenary this year.
And since we’re bringing up Hitler, anti-individualism was regnant in nazi and fascist ideology and for the same reasons: it was a threat to their statist projects and ideology.
The MLK quote is somewhat of a misquote, but the thrust is the basically same. And I’m not so sure he was against individualism because he was a fan of Emerson and Thoreau.
That's the thing: It dissipated; over Gitmo, Black Sites, etc. And that's what the left usually does: They turn on their own once in power. Because, of course, "they" could always do it better. As to the initial love, you have to remember he came in on the heels of Jr. who just broke the world.
Biden is still in the honeymoon that Obama and most POTUSs get.
Maybe. If they can somehow get some of these policies passed, I think he’ll continue being popular and even gain some voters. But the likelihood is low with Mr. West Virginia in there. Plus I don’t know how hard Biden is willing to fight for these things. Very easy to propose (although I credit his administration for doing so), much harder to make a reality unless you really pull out the stops.
A fish stinks from the head.
The American political system is, in most states, based on the motto "winner takes all". As long as this is in place, in law and in popular culture, there's just no reason to place much value on working together with others.
Another thing that is bound to divide a nation is that the president of the country (which is the most powerful position in the country) can be / must be a member of a political party. In contrast, in some European countries this is impossible, and the person who is the president cannot also be a member of a political party, because they're supposed to represent all people in the country, not just a particular party.
I think the whole idea of there being Red and Blue states within one country is insane. It's a miracle the US has any semblance of functionality at all, given the political principles by which it is governed.
And then this whole notion of the president being a member of a political party! How could things not go wrong?! Sure, it's a system that keeps people on their toes all the time (as in, "Now we have 4 years of peace and prosperity, but in the next presidential term, we could be looking at the end of times if we don't make sure that our candidate win again!"), and it keeps them divided. But beyond that? Unless, of course, this system was specifically designed for controlling the population, making it impossible for the people to rebel in any effective way, and even making them lack the motivation to do so.
I thought Obama was celebrated mainly by the cultural left who didn't really pay much attention to politics and economics and just enjoyed 'their guy' winning the competition. My memory is pretty early on Obama was depicted as an arch-neoliberal Citybank president, largely beholden to Wall Street. Cornel West certainly described him as a conservative front man, working to protect the existing privileges of the market system. His failures to do anything substantive about the crimes which led to the 2008 financial collapse was a scandal.
:100: Correct. That was all part of the "etc." I referred to. Occupy Wall St. kind of withered on the vine, Hillary never turned over her Goldman Sachs stuff. They are/were running interference for the Plutocracy. Not to mention trade deals for emerging markets.
True. I just don't know what pulling out all the stops would look like if you don't have the Senate in the bag. But it's too late to play nice. All bipartisanship has to be with the people and not the pols.
Agreed.
Quoting baker
I think that certainly adds to it, and it's exactly what the plutocrats want -- since they own both parties (this is slightly changing now, however, with Trump and Sanders). But it leads to a larger point: the lack of awareness of alternatives, whether it be how other countries function politically and economically, or a completely different view of what a human being is (and thus what an ideal society can be imagined to cultivate it).
Perhaps Americans should get out more.
Quoting James Riley
I imagine there must be some, even though I don't have concrete examples. But it won't be easy.
Divide and conquer is a piece of it, but probably a small one. The ruling class has other, very robust tools:
Misinformation; relative and absolute poverty; the law (which is more on the side of the rich than it is on the side of the poor); the police (and if need be, armed forced); the obedience training programs of secondary education; the mass media; and so on and so forth.
Divide and conquer would be more important if The People were united enough to pose a threat to the ruling class. I don't see much sign of revolutionary thinking taking over the masses, outside a small circle of friends.
Work? Strive? Persevere? We are all victims of a monstrous hoax!
I think misinformation is spread through the indoctrination centers (schools) and various media -- that's a huge weapon, yes -- perhaps bigger than lack of organizing. But on the other hand, as Chomsky points out often enough and which I see in my life (and is reflected in polling), people tend to see the real issues -- they just don't necessarily articulate them.
So if the numbers are there, and the information is (basically) there, what short of coming together is stopping us? The Occupy Movement and the Sanders' campaign are proof enough that it can happen. Both made inequality (a class issue) a focal point. That struck a nerve after 40 years of neoliberalism.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yeah, exactly.
I agree wholeheartedly.
:100:
I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand ‘I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!’ or ‘I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!’ ‘I am homeless, the Government must house me!’ and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.
This to me seems to be a classic statement of what is generally more an American frame of society versus individualism. I imagine it would have wide support. And these days here in Australia too, as neo-liberal ideas are ubiquitous - part of the Left and right - and seen widely as a form of common sense thinking.
It's not just neo-liberal ideology that is to blame though, that's only part of the story I'd say and a bit short-sighted. Socialism historically has been instrumental in breaking down any societal story that connects communities, be it religion, nationalism, ethnic traditions etc... . Granted a lot of those stories are suspect in that they also serve to justify certain power structures and all inequalities and injustices that come with that. But still, what have ideologies on the left been other than 'critical', i.e. aimed at tearing down something rather than building up a community around shared ideas.
Recent woke/identity politics are only the next iteration and further splintering of shared categories that may bind a communities together into something more than a collection of individuals. The focus is for the most part on how any cultural tradition/practice discriminates or impinges on individuals freely expressing their particular individuality. The idea that an individual might in some cases have to give up some of their individuality for a common good is almost blasphemous...
Anyway, my intention is not to bash the left here, just to say that neo-liberalism is far from the only cause, and that if there is to be a solution (i.e. "valuing what we do together") we probably should take all causes into account.
So beware what you wish for. "Valuing what we do together", building communities usually implies values and stories build around common goods and goals, and those usually end up not being very sensitive to particular individuals. Or do we really think we can have our cake and eat it too?
And it's a strawman.
I prefer to think of it as a red herring.
No, I think this is backwards anyway. Once the original sense of community is lost, it cannot be rebuild. It's like an arm that was cut off and then sewn back on: it's never quite the same and doesn't have the same functionality.
I dunno if that is true. It's seems to me that given the chance people will look for ways to build communities, i'm thinking of fans of sports-club for instance, or even the recent rise of far-right/nationalism/populism can be seen under that light. It won't be the same (and maybe that's a good thing), but new forms of community will be built it seems to me.
Is it? It sounds like more of the same to me.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
This is true, of course. As influential as it is, neoliberal ideology would not have been sufficient to somehow build individualistic proprietarianism ex nihilo. It has deeper roots in the politics of the catholic church, the Protestant reimagination of faith as something inherently individualistic. It's path has also been charted by the bourgeois revolutions starting in the late 18th century and the proprietarian society that resulted from them.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Marxism is literally the most powerful political movement in recent history. The only movements of comparable scope and influence are the major world religions (and perhaps capitalism, though there is an interesting discussion about that to be had). Given the tremendous influence on world history exercised by this ideology, it seems weird to claim that it hasn't "build" anything.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Identitarian conflict predates "left wing ideology". It might even be the original form of conflict. The emergence of a left wing ideology has briefly restructured conflict in Western democracies along class lines (roughly in the period 1930 to 1980). The class structure of politics has broken down in the time since, and identitarian conflict has re-emerged.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
True enough. We should not imagine that building a better system is easy or that it comes without tradeoffs. Utopias are important as guiding lights, but they are also dangerous if they are used as justification.
Marxism didn't "build" the communities, or "Marxist" states... it usually had to devolve into some kind a authoritarian person-cult to created some kind of shared ideology (i.e. Stalin, Mao, Castro etc...)
Perhaps it does sound like more of the same to you. To me it sounds far less absurd than the incongruous four word slogan she has become known for by critics. I always like context - especially from people whose worldview I disagree with.
This view isn't compatible with the evidence. There were significant Marxist movements around the world, united by a shared vision. They were occasionally close to coming to power in Germany and France. Nor can either the USSR or the PRC be reduced to "Stalinist personality cult". In the beginning, genuine hope and Identification with the ideals of Marxism existed. And there was genuine societal transformation that is visible until today, for example in the area of women's rights.
Edit: Or consider the example of North Vietnam: There is widespread agreements among analysts of the conflict that the North won because northern fighters were strongly motivated. They knew what they were fighting for. Despite the fact that the North Vietnamese government can hardly be said to have been more beneficial to the ordinary people, it was still able to provide a motivation that South Vietnam was never able to match with its soulless military juntas.
I'm not denying that some people genuinely hoped that they could built a Marxist state. But i'm not talking about what people hoped or wished for, I'm looking at what existing communities actually were built around. Marxist movements where political movements looking to overthrow the existing structure, looking to tear down... in the first place. Whatever came after was something else. Maybe we can quibble about the details of what it exactly was, but I think my original point still stands, ideologies of the left don't really offer us something substantial to build communities around.
And I mean this shouldn't be surprising really, if you look at what the common values of the left are, they are critical or reactionary for the most part... they don't stand on their own. It's freedom from something else, non-discrimination in reaction to some discriminatory traditional practice, equality as a reaction to inequalities created by existing societal structures, etc...
Of course people build communities. But I'm pointing at the difference between a community build for the purpose of survival and a community built for some lesser purpose, such as the purpose of entertainment. Nowadays, people seem to be willing and able to build mostly the latter.
Looking at your chart, where do Libertarians come down on government limitations on personal responsibility?
In any case, by now the ideology of "freedom" and "leave me alone" is so strong in the US (and being fair, is also growing in other parts of the world), that I don't know what could overcome it. Not that it cannot be defeated, just that I don't see how at the moment.
To be fair, BLM was very important in the George Floyd protests. Occupy was important too.
Occupy could not be sustained to the degree it had attained when it was in Zuccotti Park. BLM on the other hand, seems to still be active.
Then there's these sporadic demonstrations, such as the recent ones condemning Israel or even back to the women's protest when Trump won.
But these protests are only a few days long.
I know others have, correctly in my view, said that neoliberalism cannot possibly account for everything. True. But it does account for a large part of our current global problems. They've been organizing for more than 80 years.
The left does not have that...
Based on post-election surveys, Piketty argues that what we're seeing in Western democracies is the breakdown of the old left/right class structure into a system of multiple elites: an educated left wing elite and an income / wealth right wing elite, both of which are inegalitarian. The left wing elite is interested in cooperation, but not to the point where is would endanger it's privileges, and the right wing is committed to competition as the basic principle.
There is still an egalitarian, internationalist left, but it's not yet fully crystallized and vying for the support of the disadvantaged classes with the nationalist movements.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
I don't know if we're just talking (metaphorically) different languages here, but this juxtaposition makes no sense to me. What people hope and wish for is usually a central part of what communities are "actually" build around.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
That's basically the exact opposite of how I see things. The whole reason Marxism was so powerful and ended up so terrible was because it had, as it's goal, a powerful utopian vision - the classless society. A Rousseauean paradise. And because it was such a grand goal, people were willing to do grand things for it - including grand destruction.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
I think you're retroactively applying a judgement (justified or not) of modern left-wing intellectuals onto the entirety of traditionally "left" movements. Any political position is a "reaction" to the status quo, even wanting to keep said status.
I think that makes sense. I'd only add that some of this left elite may be willing to "give back", in terms of paying slightly higher taxes and some may even want modest welfare reform. But this does not mean "endangering it's privileges" in a manner that would actually cause them to lose privileges.
If they were smart, they'd want modest "reform", because it gives something to the people and could serve to temper the anger which is felt throughout the world. And then they would look good and perhaps even do some good, while staying safe. But even that's too radical for most elites.
As for the right, yes. I've seen it pop-up specifically within the neoliberal/liberal (liberals can be anything these days, from right to left) framework, "competition" is a dogma. But this mindset is going to kill us all. Almost no one is safe from global warming, nor massive war. All which increase drastically due to this "competition" mentality.
The egalitarian/socialist left seems to me to suffer from serious problems in coordination and sustaining the movement. There's way too much fighting in the left: you aren't left enough, Marxist that's nothing I'm an anarchist, anarchist how naïve I'm social democrat, etc, etc. It's crazy.
Sorry for the long rant. It's just that the problems facing us as a species cannot wait for much...
Probably. But it's also complete BS.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Then your notion of "socialism" is strange indeed, and scope of history limited.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
No one said it's the only cause.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
I'm really not sure what you're talking about here. There's risk in anything -- whether we join together or not. There is far greater risk, in my view, of clinging to this dogma of rugged individualism, and so keeping ourselves isolated and trying to "go it alone" on everything. There is far greater power in numbers, working as a team, collaboration, networking, solidarity, education, etc. This is the only point. It has been systematically beaten out of people's heads for decades.
You appear to be overthinking it.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Not even close. To be "Libertarian" today is to be essentially a corporatist. The term is almost the opposite of what it once meant -- as is true for most political terminology in the United States.
"Government should leave us alone" and "support free markets." That's at the core of neoliberalism through and through. Translation: Big Government is bad, so reduce it. It's no solution, it's the problem. What IS the solution? Private business -- privatize everything, take it out of the public ("Big Government") sphere and put it into the hands of private power, which is unaccountable to the public.
No honest business person believes in free markets. It's a fantasy. They value socialism and big government more than anyone -- they simply believe the government should serve them. Subsidies, bailouts, tax cuts, deregulation, etc.
Capitalism cannot survive without state intervention. Never has in any developed country.
:100:
Here's how to make sense of it. There were no marxist communities, but political parties that in most countries didn't get to rule the community. When a community is 'actually' build around an ideology you have institutions that represent and embody those ideas... like say the church in Western Christian communities of old.
Quoting Echarmion
Maybe what I said makes more sense in light of my answer above. Marxism was aiming to tear down existing structures and institutions that embodies ideologies that where counter to marxist ideology. You cannot have marxism if those institutions are still operating.
True. If you really want a big-picture view, the development of neoliberalism emerging in the late 70s was simply one expression of a reaction against the 1960s, which were themselves a result of the New Deal. So when you say "80 years," you're right. The wealthy never liked the New Deal, and they've been fighting a gradual and sophisticated fight on all fronts to dismantle it ever since.
Lead by intellectuals like Milton Friedman (and to a lesser extend Ayn Rand), the underlying beliefs and justifications were provided. By the 80s, they were becoming policies. We've been living with the effects of said policies.
Could you put up a succinct paragraph in ordinary language against this proposition of Thatcher and Hayek's?
Yes. First, it’s creating a problem that didn’t exist. Much like welfare queens, it’s a myth created to justify shifting power from the public to the private sphere. If all Thatcher sees is people wanting government to solve all their problems, that’s her own delusions. People should demand their government do more to help them.
Secondly, this nonsense about “there is no society” is laughable. Of course societies consist of individuals, just as forests consist of trees. So what? Doesn’t mean there’s no forests or societies. Any more than saying “there aren’t any individuals, because individuals consist only of cells.”
All she’s doing is creating a false picture as a pretext to shift responsibility away from collective action and the public sphere, to individuals and private ownership. Hence the policies against unions and the rhetoric about “government is the problem.”
It’s complete BS. Always has been.
No much of an argument to respond to here. I think it's pretty uncontroversial that socialism was instrumental in tearing down existing societal structures... like say religious institutions.
Quoting Xtrix
The point you are making (one which I agree with to be clear) has implication, not mere eventualities or risks... and I'm not sure people realise this and/or are willing to accept those implications.
Maybe I'm overthinking it, or maybe most don't think things through far enough... It's easy to point at this or that in isolation, it's another thing to figure out how things hang together and what the ramifications are of changing one variable in the equation. I'm saying individualism is a package deal of sorts with other things we might or might not value. I agree with you point, and I was looking to take it bit further... but it's fine, we can leave it at this.
It goes even before that. The term "neoliberalism" was coined Walter Lippman Colloquium in Paris in 1938 by liberal (market based) minded intellectuals and economists, in part as a reaction to the New Deal but also in general because they saw the liberal project as conceived by property rights and competition being corrupted in the late 19th and early 20th century, more or less.
It comes in large part from the Austrian School whose most lauded member is Von Mises. But it included Joseph Schumpeter, Willheim Röpke, Hayek and many others. They thought about how to save market society for a very long time. And only really started implementing such views, in as much as they could, by the time of Reagan and Thatcher, although as you know, it was forced down on the people of Chile under Pinochet. Friedman was a member, but quite simple minded compared to others.
Quinn Slobodian documents this very well in Globalists: The End of Empire and The Birth of Neoliberalism. Recommended to me by you know who.
There are others too by different authors: Marginal Revolutionaries by Wasserman, The Morals of the Market by Whyte, Never Let A Serious Crises Go to Waste by Mirowski, etc., etc.
In any case, it has very much managed to seep into all of us to some extent or other. It may be starting to crack, as evidenced by Biden's agenda, which far, far from ideal, is a step away from austerity.
I'm not against socialism, even said so explicitly, just trying to be honest about its role historically.
I'm European, most governments in Europe aren't really socialist at this point. But that's a bit besides the point. Socialist movement were fiercely anti-clerical, they sure did have a big hand in secularisation... and failed to provide a alternative story that inspired forming communities around. Now a lot of their traditional voting public have shifted to voting for extreme right parties that do try to provide some kind of story, however BS it is. Anyway that's the long story short, and probably a bit unnuanced, but I don't really have the time right now.
Edit: Or here is another angle to maybe help you understand it, socialism is somewhat of an intellectual or "dialectical" movement that is typically at odds with tradition (even aside from religion). The "people" like their traditions, it's something they can identify with and build communities around.
Dialectics is a dissolvent for traditions... Socrates VS Homer/the gods.
You see my problem? The Thatcher position is much easier to articulate and is elegant to read and hear. Yours is jagged and defensive. 'Complete BS' is not an argument.
Can you write a paragraph of simple elegance to rival hers, from a communitarian perspective?
As someone who has advised governments and fought neoliberal excesses here, I have tried for years and have found it difficult.
What are they? Or, more precisely, what were they before the recent response to immigration? The reason I ask is, I want some of that, and yet my fellow Americans scream "Socialism" at the top of their lungs whenever anyone mentions the tax rates and benefits in the rest of the developed world.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
That almost sounds like communism.
Well what we have is not the accomplishment of current socialist parties, but something socialist, Christian-democrats and liberals worked out after WWII. What they are now is hard to tell actually, they have been part of the establishment so long now that that's probably what defines them the most... another faction trying to keep themselves in power.
But yeah, I get that you are sceptical of the 'socialism scare' that has been promoted in the US since the cold war. I'm not coming from that point of view.
That's different. If you want slogans and propaganda, there are all kinds out there. Plenty to rival Thatchers. "Things are better together" -- simple, easy. Strength in numbers. "We are the 99%". Resist "divide and conquer." "Come together" (to quote the Beatles). Whatever you like.
If you can't find that stuff, you're not looking hard enough. And frankly, I don't think Thatchers paragraph is very "elegant" at all. Not just grammatically but also in content. But to each his own.
So's capitalism, for that matter. Capitalism is also responsible for far more deaths, if that's how we want to measure things. But that's not really the point.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
I really don't see the difference in the words, as they're all effects of choices and actions, but fine -- yes, there are also "implications." There are also "implications" in deciding whether to take the bus to work or not. There are implications for voting, for protesting, for living alone in the woods. I don't understand why you choose to point out truisms here.
The point is that we've been brainwashed, for 40 years, to believe that an ideal of life is to be an individual consumer and to disassociate from others, whether it be from unions or political involvement or community organizing. Which is exactly what the plutocratic class wants and has encouraged. No conspiracy, just an obvious reflection of the ideology of the powerful.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
If you want to take it a bit further, I don't see how pointing out that there are "implications" involved in shifting the focus away from rugged individualism, of which we've internalized over the last 40 years, and towards collective action, solidarity, unionization, organization, etc., is doing so. But perhaps I'm missing something.
No one is looking for slogans - did I even mention that word? Nor did I say I can't find useful paragraphs elsewhere. What I said was, I bet you would struggle write a simple elegant paragraph articulating community over individualism in the manner of that speech of Thatcher's. Whatever you may think of her she and her team had a solid grasp of communication. To this day her ideas resonate and it is not just a media and oligarchical conspiracy. And I say this as someone who is not a fan of MT.
Again, I really don't see the paragraph you mentioned as all that eloquent and, frankly, not very impressive. The fact that it resonates -- true, but so did Donald Trump's speeches. "We're gonna build a wall and Mexico will pay for it, because they're sending over rapists and drugs."
But yes, speechwriters are hired for a reason, and proponents of neoliberalism are very good at propaganda. Was this really your only point? In that case: yes, agreed.
Telling people what they want to hear has always had an easier go of it, especially with those a mile wide and an inch deep. (I'm talking about you.)
Yes, and that's encouraging. That in fact was the hope -- that he could be pushed towards more progressive policies. So far there's only proposals, which are still short of ideal, and some haven't been pushed hard enough -- but it's a start. It's light years away from anything that would have happened under Trump, where we would not only not have these proposals, we'd be fending off attempts to go in the opposite direction. People still don't realize just how dangerous that would have been, and how important it was to vote him out. Which is very discouraging.
Thanks for the book recommendations.
But Thatcher did not tell the voters what they wanted to hear. What is fascinating is how neoliberalism has made people vote against their own interests, through ideas such as her paragraph above. It isn't in anyone's interests to minimize community. But the ideas grab hold of people.
Quoting Xtrix
It's much deeper than this. The mainstream Left seems to have been bad at articulating rival narratives. And there is no question that Murdoch hasn't helped. I don't wish to dwell on this.
Who said being poor was "individualistic"? What are you talking about?
It's promoted as the title of your thread:
"Socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor."
I think you are confusing what people want to hear with what they need to hear. People like to think of themselves as rugged individualists, risk-taking, bootstrapping, captains of daring-do. And even if they are content, they will champion those who they perceive to be championing the myth they tell themselves about themselves, especially when a boogey man is coming to take what think they got on their own, with the sweat of their own brow and thier superior knowledge and work ethic. She told them what they wanted to hear and that's an easier haul than telling them they are dummies getting screwed by charlatans. Nobody wants to think they've been had.
I don't think you're understanding that quotation.
Martin Luther King isn't saying that being poor is individualistic, he's exposing a common attitude taken by those in power: they decry socialism and encourage "rugged individualism." In reality, it's actually the reverse of that -- i.e., what we actually have is socialism for the rich, where they get tax cuts, subsidies, bailouts, and protections, while the poor are told to be rugged individuals who shouldn't be asking for handouts from the "Welfare state."
Yeah, so I'm asking what's so individualistic about being poor? Are you only arguing for what the right tells to do?
This question is bizarre. You're still missing the point of that quotation.
There's nothing individualistic about being poor. There's nothing individualistic about being rich. This is barely coherent.
Again, he's talking about the encouraging of people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, to reject handouts from the government, to "make it on one's own" -- whether poor or otherwise. Not to rely on the nanny welfare state, etc. This is what that quote is about.
What he's pointing out, however, is hypocrisy. Why? Because when it comes to the rich, they're the first ones that benefit from a welfare state, despite professing the ideal of "individualism." When the poor ask for anything, however, they're told to take a hike.
I can't make it any clearer than that.
That is a pretty good argument.
I don't quite see the utility of the quote. OK, so I'm poor, have to pull myself up by my bootstraps, and have to struggle to get ahead. By the way, this quote of rugged individualism isn't any new thing, as Reagan promoted it to the right in his days.
So, do idiots believe that they have to just bite the bullet and muster the willpower to pull themselves from their own bootstraps? Is that what this topic is about?
That's clear, yes. But it's Martin Luther King, not I, who said it. It's been around for decades. Is this really your first encounter with it, or have you never understood the "utility" of it?
Quoting Shawn
I really don't know what you mean by this. Are you describing a reality or are you describing an attitude about the poor?
The fact that you are still struggling to understand what King was talking about is revealing.
Quoting Shawn
Yes, the hypocrisy of "rugged individualism" that King describes goes through many administrations. Which you don't seem to understand.
Quoting Shawn
I've explained several times what the "topic" is about. You seem either unwilling or incapable of understanding it.
The above is barely coherent, by the way. I'm not even sure what you're asking.
We still occasionally wear cowboy boots to the dancehall, smoke Marlboro Reds, shoot pool, almost exclusively drink Miller High Life out of the glass bottle, and have a general tendency to be fairly standoffish, but have traded Conway Twitty and Ricky Nelson for Townes Van Zandt and Mazzy Star.
OK, then you said:
"I'd like to get reactions to this assertion from the Forum."
So, you don't care for my reaction, that's fine by me. I already said that its a de facto reality, as per:
Quoting Xtrix
And, yes it's also an attitude.
Sorry, but this is what I said:
I wasn't looking for a reaction to the Martin Luther King quotation, and certainly not from anyone who doesn't understand what it means.
I have no idea what this means.
No kidding. Nor do you want to.
Well, with grandiose quotes like those I don't suppose I would want to. As if embracing rugged individualism would bring about anything of utility.
And, yet the right and many on the left embrace it.
Your reading comprehension problems aside, that's exactly the point: it doesn't bring about anything of utility.
I suggest reading more broadly and more carefully before commenting.
Who would "want to internalize it"? That's like asking who would want to internalize the language or religion or stories of one's culture. A very strange way to word it.
It's simply propaganda, and many people have internalized it. Whether they want to or not. Individualism has been cultivated as an ideal. As you mentioned, it's all over -- on the left and the right.
As a monarchist, it's also probably how she genuinely saw things: citizens as subjects of the government, the way people are subjects of the monarch. She might not have seen herself as an elected official at all. Subjects of the monarch owe the monarch, not the other way around.
Similarly, Trump the POTUS appeared to see the American people as his employees and himself as their boss.
Nobody likes you when you're down and out. It doesn't get more individualistic than that.
Quoting Tom Storm
Absolutely, on both counts.
I think this difficulty might have something to do with where (in what social context) and by whom the text is presented.
A politician (regardless of political affiliation) is simply not in the position to bring across a message of community in a way that would not betray itself.
The message of community over individualism can be meaningfully delivered only in the context of a family and perhaps a work team, but beyond those, the group of people expected to work together and care about eachother is just too big and too abstract for the message of community to still make sense and be anything but empty words.
In some cases, there's also the overjustification effect:
When working as a team, collaboration, networking, solidarity, education get beaten into people's heads (in return for a promised reward), people lose interest in the very things they're supposed to be interested in (and in which they originally had a measure of interest).
I think the conclusion here is right, but perhaps your analysis is a bit one sided. It's not that the left is simply bad at articulating a rival narrative, it's that the left, if we take it as a whole [I]doesn't have one[/I]. After world war 2, the parties on the political left successfully build the democratic welfare state - something to rival the Marxist/Leninist idea of the totalitarian one-party-state (and, as it turned out, much more successful). However, the evolution of the welfare state was basically finished in the 1960s. Since then, there sinply hasn't been a widely supported left wing strategy to deal with the remaining problems.
The presence and demise of the self-styled communist countries had a big influence in this. While it made sure that robust re-distribution could not be entirely opposed by the wealthy, it also pushed the left into an ideological space of national competition. The fall of Communism then removed the shackles from the inegalitarian factions, while the left is still locked into its old modes of thinking. By now, the traditional classist left has disintegrated.
Yes. It would have been a total disaster. I'm not sure the US is clear of that if Trump runs again in 2024. I hope not.
The problem for me is the speed needed in relation to the time we have left to prevent the worst outcome from happening with Global Warming. Some people know about it. But not nearly enough.
Maybe. For me it seems - and this is loose - to be the case that the left split and privileged a cultural left over the reformist left and it's clear, where I live, that many working people no longer identify with the left and its causes. It's heartland is cities and the educated. Hence the conservative cry of elites around so much left or 'progressive' social policy.
Groups hijack certain terms to make them more appealing to others. Just look at how the terms, "liberal" and "progressive" have been hijacked by the left as sheep's clothes for their authoritarianism and maintaining the status quo.
It's up to us level-headed folk to educate these numbskulls what the terms really do mean. I mean, all you have to do is look up the word, "Libertarian" in the dictionary and see that is makes no mention of corporatist. You can even look up the synonym for corporatist and still see no reference to Libertarianism. So it seems that you aren't even close.
This is meant as a joke, right? Or are you serious?
Quoting Harry Hindu
Yes, like the meme you posted, which is what I was using if you deign to read. Hence my mentioning "government should leave us alone" and "support free markets."
The term can be used any way you like. I don't care about that. I care about reality. The reality is that the policies proposed and supported by those who claim to be "Libertarian" are clear examples of what I mentioned: neoliberal corporatism through and through.
But you stick to the dictionary if you like.
Absolutely. In US history at least wealthy economic conservatives have talked a good game about the virtues of self-discipline and freedom from government control, but they've also been the quiet beneficiaries of centralized influence over protective tariffs, immigration policy, monetary policy, bailouts, subsidies, etc.
Indeed. The list goes on and on: tax cuts, weakening of tax havens, weakening of the SEC, weakening of the IRS, patent laws, roads, police and military protection, the court system, state-funded innovation and research (computers, the internet, etc.), and on and on. All gifts from the state -- i.e., from the taxpayers. None of this is considered "socialism," of course.
But when the state tries to do something for the population al la the New Deal, it's "big government meddling in your lives." It's communism. Marxism.
It's an old trick that people are waking up to, especially young people. They see the hypocrisy and the double standards. Thanks in large part to the Great Recession, the Occupy movement, Bernie Sanders campaigns (AOC et al.), and social media, this has all been exposed. The truth is on their side -- and it's obvious. Just as the science is on the environmentalists side. Very hard to argue with. It reminds me more of the marijuana "debate," which has come a long way indeed. The hypocrisy of allowing alcohol while criminalizing marijuana was extremely hard to justify after a while. Ditto gay marriage. The states can lead the way, as they should, as examples for others. Once it's shown that the world doesn't end when these things change, and that they can sometimes be (gasp) profitable, things start to turning around...very slowly. Like turning an oil tanker.
That gives me hope about destroying neoliberalism, and about the environment. What's depressing is that these signs should have been emerging about 30 years ago, right around 1990 -- or at the latest, around 2000. But nothing happened then, and so here we are.
Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if Al Gore was elected instead of the walking disaster that was W. It would have been a huge plus to the environment, at least. So perhaps we'd have a head start there. But who knows. Sometimes it takes disasters like Bush and Trump -- or recessions, pandemics, wars, floods/draughts/hurricanes/extreme heat/rising seas, etc -- to wake us all up.
Totally agree. I have my own idiosyncratic brand of politics - a weird but imho coherent blend of a certain type of older conservatism and progressivism - but I'm right there with you on everything.
Libertarianism did actually originate from individualist Anarchism, and, so, was originally kind of a left-wing political philosophy before it came to be associated with laissez-faire economics. If you read the Wikipedia article on it, it'll tell you the same thing.
https://youtu.be/mbouhVto1MY
(Because I’m tired of explaining it.)
Chomsky is talking about contemporary Libertarianism and the origins of Libertarianism as an Anarchist school of thought.
Read the article.
Which is what I'm talking about, too.
Quoting thewonder
No. Not as an "anarchist school of thought." You're making that up. He does mention that it's related to 17th and 18th century classical liberalism, which has commonalities to traditional anarchism.
Quoting thewonder
I already have -- and it's completely irrelevant.
Chomsky talks about how it was connected to classical Liberalism and then talks about turn of the century Libertarians who were influenced by Anarchists. I haven't made anything up.
Yes, you have.
You've proven yourself too much a buffoon for me to really care about responding seriously. Sorry, but I'm not interested.
Okay, but it says right there in the article that Libertarianism originated in Anarchism.